Eurovision 2.0

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among countries of the EU. Each country submits a song to be performed on live TV and then casts votes for the other countries’ songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. It is one of the numerous Song Contests with the difference that Eurovision had been around every year since 1956.

This year, with the claim “Save Eurovision” Spanish public TV has decided to take a fresh approach to the Spanish presence on the Song Contest and so they’ve decided to use MySpace to select this year’s Spanish candidate.

MySpace is the main social networking site used by emerging singers and groups to promote their music. And because of this they have decided to give the opportunity to these social talents who are more present on the web.

TVE director has said that “even though the Song Contest is still working well, they want to give it a new profile and open it to a wider participation”. I have to say that for me the festival has become really old fashion and I agree that by opening to the younger consumer will help to create hype. The MySpace group already has 243 candidates to be the next Eurovision singer and 1700 friends (huge participation compared to previous years when it was broadcast on TV). Having said this, the festival organisers will need to work on the event too and realise we are not in 1968 anymore.

The 5 most voted songs will go to the final election event broadcast by TVE on the 1^st of March and the public will vote for their favourite via SMS and phone calls.

It’s a big step for traditional Spanish public TV to take this approach; there has been a lot of positive coverage on Spanish media, and it’s done a lot to their image.

Other countries have been doing that for 10 years, it’s Pop Idol, but I guess it’s a revolution for a traditional country like mine.