A couple Fridays ago while out to dinner with fellow bloggers (Jr, Suw & Kevin), I made the prediction that America would soon get its own version of the Eurovision Song Contest and sure enough NBC recently licensed the rights to the show format.
Basic format is that one musical act from 40 mostly European countries, battle it in preliminary rounds with a view to making the finals which has potential to be watched by a billion+ people. Interesting bit is that song has to be original and no more than 3 minutes long. Plus while the winner is determined by public vote, they are not allowed to vote for the musical act from their own country. Thus, what has happened in recent years is that geo-political relations come in to play and most vote for acts from their neighbouring countries. In addition, size doesn’t really matter. Regardless of the population of the countries, each gets 12 points which they cast as a percentage of the public phone & text vote.
Thus, should NBC move forward, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the United States. I must admit that despite the poor quality of some of the musical acts, I was glued to the TV when they broadcast the 2006 finals over here this past April, as it was my first time watching — and the biting commentary from Terry Wogan made the show just downright comical and good all around family entertainment.