“it’s all about you”: How large is the influence of the big 5?

I was casually reading through the Eurovision.tv website, as I do – I mean I am a Eurofan after all, and I stumbled across a reference I found hilarious but particularly peculiar.

“Although Flo Rida will appear on stage with Senhit to perform ‘Adrenalina’ he is not credited as a featured artist. Just in case Richard Osman is reading.“

The author at https://eurovision.tv/story/vital-statistics

To those of you who do not watch UK television you may well be unaware of who this “Richard Osman” is, as he is a British TV presenter best known for his work on the UK version of the gameshow Pointless. In the show Osman has the role of explaining the rules regarding what answers will and will not be accepted for each question and as a result the article is humourously alluding to him declining ‘Adrenalina’ as a correct answer in a hypothetical ‘Eurovision duets’ question. I have to admit it did make me crack a smile.

I was however left wondering just how many of the sites non-British users would have immediately understood the joke. A trivial thing for sure but on a website which uses Central European Time (CET) for its publishing times and is catering to primarily a European and then global audience, I was scratching my head as to how a reference to a British TV presenter had stumbled its way into the article. I mean sure, these days Pointless is a staple on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) primary channel BBC1 but its not exactly something I’d expect an international audience to relate to. Whilst the show has been a successful format to sell into other countries. as far as I can tell they all had different hosts (I mean they need to speak the language right) and the joke did not reference the show directly but rather Osman himself.

Now this article was made by compiling information collected by fan sites so it is possible that the reference slipped in from one of them…. But it was seemingly written up and certainly published by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) themselves. It certainly is interesting that either consciously or unconsciously a UK-centric reference managed to find its way into this article.

But that discussion you could easily argue is all very trivial and well Pointless (I’ll see myself out… eventually). And well it is. It just begs the question of how much influence a country’s viewership or financial input should have when it comes to the control of Eurovision. On one hand, money has to play a large factor because someone has to foot the bill and it only makes sense they are rewarded. On the other, the big 5 (the highest financial contributors) already receive automatic qualification status, without gaining a targeted focus from the official website itself. This automatic qualifying rule alone has in itself has proved a contentious issue and is allegedly one of the reasons why Turkey withdrew from the contest.

Back to the point on hand, Eurovision’s core values seem to diverge away from the idea of a few countries being the focus of the EBUs output and rather be trying to appeal to all of our different cultures and experiences:

“The Eurovision Song Contest’s values are of universality and inclusivity and our proud tradition of celebrating diversity through music which is reflected in our global audiences of over 180 million.”

https://eurovision.tv/mediacentre/faq-about-the-esc

Let’s be real, it is no mean feat that the EBU ever got Eurovision off the ground in the first place, let alone to mean so much to so many people. This should be accoladed! In many ways the EBU have found the sweet spot of having mass global appeal whilst also being ingrained as an important aspect of European identity and by extension, celebrating localised European identities.

Maybe having a few targeted jokes for your biggest markets is simply good business practice, as long as their is plenty for everyone else as well. It’s a rather subjective topic. The EBU obviously needs to work in the best commercial interests of the contest to keep it afloat and worthwhile but for me anyway, I just hope the EBU always remember that it is all about you, you and you and not simply all about a few!

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