The latest winner is Måns
Zelmerlöw of Sweden, who won the 2015 contest in Vienna, Austria wit h "Heroes".
Thank you Ari
for this lovely First Day Cover of Eurovision 2007.
Ari
gave me this lovelyFDC with the impressive minisheet issued by Finland in 2007. Several
countries have issued Eurovision stamps in the past, but special mention must
go to… Finland again! In 2007 it marked its hosting of the event with an issue
celebrating some of its previous entrants, including, of course, Lordi, the
awesome glam horror metal band who had won it for Finland the previous year
(2006).
The Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la
chanson), often shortened to ESC orEurovision, is the longest
running annual TV song
competition held, primarily, among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) since 1956. The competition was
based upon the existing Sanremo
Music Festival held in Italy.
Each member, or invited, country submits a song to be
performed on live television and radio and then casts votes for the
other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition.
The contest has been broadcast every year for sixty years, since its
inauguration in 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in
the world. It is also one of the
most watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been
quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and
600 million internationally. Eurovision has also been broadcast outside Europe to such
places as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt,
India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines,
Singapore, South Korea, South Africa, Suriname, Taiwan, Thailand, the United
States, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam, although these countries do not
compete. However, Australia was invited to compete as a guest country in 2015
for the 60 years of Eurovision celebration. Since
2000, the contest has also been broadcast over the Internet, via the Eurovision
website.
Winning the Eurovision Song Contest provides an
opportunity for the winning artists to capitalise on the surrounding publicity
and further their careers. Artists whose international careers were directly
launched into the spotlight following their participation at Eurovision
include: Italian Domenico Modugno, who came third with
the song "Nel blu dipinto di blu" ("In the sky, painted
blue", popularly known as "Volare") in 1958; ABBA, who won the contest for Sweden in 1974 with "Waterloo"; Céline Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988 with the French-language song
"Ne partez pas sans moi" ("Don't leave without me"); the Spaniard Julio Iglesias, who has sold over 300
million records worldwide, was beaten into fourth place by Dana, winning for Ireland in 1970 with "All Kinds of
Everything"; and Bucks Fizz,
who won in 1981 for the United Kingdom with "Making Your Mind Up".
No comments:
Post a Comment