Nevermind American Idol...

In the spirit of the American Idol finale airing tonight, the New York Times has an op-ed article about Eurovision. Europeans, from whom we imported the concept of Idol, have been competing in Eurovision for over fifty years.

This year 43 nations participated, including Israel and Turkey, with each country nominating a song to represent them in competition. Like Idol, the songs are performed and then voted upon by the audience through text messages. You can vote as many times as you like, the only stipulation being that you can't vote for your nation's song. When all of say England's votes are counted, the country whose song received the most votes gets 12 points, the one with the second most points, 10 points, the third most votes 8 points, and so on.

What's really interesting is that nations tend to vote for other nations not based on talent, but on regionalism. From the NYT OpEd:

So imagine my surprise when Serbia not only won, but crushed the opposition, beating second-place Ukraine (yes, the drag queen [PICTURED]) by 268 points to 235. Britain, with a paltry 19 points, narrowly edged out Ireland to avoid last place; and Sweden scraped together a meager 51 points, coming in 18th out of 24. What was going on? Two words that were shouted across the British dailies the next day: “Bloc Voting.”

I had heard about this practice, of course, whereby geographical and cultural neighbors tend to vote for each other, and nobody votes for Britain (well, except for Malta). But it was startling to see just how flagrant it was. The Scandinavians all voted for one another; Lithuania gave 10 points to Latvia (whose entry, bizarrely, sang in Italian); former Warsaw Pact countries voted for Russia; and almost nobody voted for Britain (surprisingly, Ireland did — and, of course, Malta).

But Serbia was the overwhelming beneficiary of the system, receiving the top score of 12 points from every other member of the former Yugoslavia — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia — suggesting that memories of war and ethnic cleansing can be set aside with surprising ease when it comes to the serious business of winning a singing contest. It’s hard to say whether the 60 points that the former Yugoslavia effectively gave to itself altered the final result, but an enterprising Irishman suggested that if all the Irish counties were allowed to secede, they would be unstoppable....

But it was also obvious how little love Eastern Europe feels for the West. Although the “big four” — Britain, France, Germany and Spain (Italy does not participate) — basically pay for the contest, none of them made it into the top 16;

This is unfortunate. Not because I have much sympathy for Britain, France, etc. - but because I am a fan of true international competitions (e.g., the World Cup)

Apparently NBC has negotiated the rights to bring a similar format to the United States - with all 50 states competing. I don't think that sort of competition would be as compelling. I could see something like all the coastal (blue) states voting against the inland (red) states, or vice versa. But maybe doing that once every four years is already entertaining enough (ZOINKS!)

Below is a video of this year's second place winner, the Ukraine. Really, this puts Melinda Doolittle to shame.