Is this really a big deal? The Lithuanian national television first failed to gather the sum needed to send Lithuanian performers to Eurovision, but then they found a private sponsor, which agreed to pay 90.000 Euros. So if 90k € is all that is needed to participate, I don't think the money should be an issue for anyone (plus they make some money back with the commercials). Lithuania and many other countries paid 500k € just for a chance to be considered for a wild card to FIBA WC (by the way, the same story with the governement failing to provide money and private sponsors stepping in), compared to that, Eurovision seems quite cheep.
Well, the actual numbers in Greece are much bigger from what i've heard and there are no private funds involved afaik.Stealing and misusing the tax payers' money is a popular "sport" in Greece and ERT has been involved in quite a few scandals of similar nature.
I'm surprised and saddened really about this WC wildcard info...
To tell you the truth 95% of greek sports survives on State money (and i don't mean NTs and National Associations, i mean private owned sports clubs) and this is no lesser scandal than the funding of personal PR campaigns like the Eurovision song contest.
To put it simply: In which manner do the People profit by investing in such crap?
Once again, don't get me wrong. I recognize the fact that there are people who don't mind paying for this. The problem is that some DO mind. So, the way this is funded is actually scandalous.IMO it would be fairer if each national broadcasting organization held a fund-raising...
By the way, I'm sure that in a long run this contest is economically beneficial for most participating countries.
And you base that on what exactly?
Well, not my kind of fun, but that's a personal opinion.
What exactly should it produce?
Well, correct me if i'm wrong here but the original idea (besides bringing the people of europe together
) was to produce some new talent, sth that has not happened if you disregard the sole case of ABBA...
From what i gather from your post, the main attraction of this song contest apart from being fun, is the competition between countries.
Well, they could always hold a popularity contest and skip the boring and talentless singing part altogether...
Edit: I can't believe my longest post on IBN is for the Eurovision contest.
I know that the music quality is not so high in ESC, but it's always interesting to see, who people vote for, so I always enjoy it. This is Lithuania's entry:
