Special EU-Digest report on the European Song Festival
Talent the big winner - by Rick Morren
Around since 1956, when the first Eurovision Song Contest took place in Lugano (Switzerland), the contest has quickly became a true European tradition. The European Song Festival is different from the "Great American Song Contest", because in the Euro Song Festival all the artists participating are already well known in their own countries. They come from every corner of Europe, with Israel as the only "outsider".
Again, last night, the Euro Song Festival had us glued to the TV for over three hours, as it had done in most past years. This time around there were 24 finalists participating in a spectacular show broadcast from Helsinki, Finland. It was not only a great show with very talented artists, but also pretty democratic when it came to voting for who the public considered the best. This was done by direct (phone) vote from everywhere in Europe and Israel.
To vote you had to dial into a local number and include the listed number of your favorite singer. So if your favorite singer was listed as number 12 you dialed the number and included the number 12 at the end of the number. This registered your vote on the Euro song festival computer in your home area, which was connected to a master computer. You could not cheat by calling twice from the same phone, because the Euro computer matched the incoming callers phone number with all previously made calls.
Everything was handled electronically, even the voice thanking you for voting was mechanical (could this also be a sample of what future political voting would look like?). This kind of electronic vote registration also gives the voter a quick tally of the results once the vote is over. It took only about two minutes after the Song Festival voting closed for the results to be announced. Serbia's Marija Serifovic with her beautiful and powerful song "Prayer" ended up the winner.
Some countries complained that this kind of voting favored people voting in blocks, but at the end it turned out that most of us will vote for talent. This year the Eastern Europeans just had more talent than the singers who represented Northern Europe. Isn't that what competition is all about?
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