Today was day for the Eurovision Song Contest. Although I've been taken in by some of the cultural leftovers of my European heritage, this is one thing I never adopted, so it's as much a mystery to me as it is to any other North Americans. Basically, it's a kitschy music contest in which each country enters a song and someone to sing it, and all genres are welcome. And everyone watches even though they don't like a lot of it.
But in our connected world, it's hard to ignore anything that's popular somewhere in the English-speaking world. I've spent the day wading through cryptic tweets about the performances. It was a lesson in how we in anglo-North America must sound during events like the Superbowl. My apologies, rest of the world.
I find it interesting that the contest is such a modern thing: international, reality TV, audience participation, appreciated ironically. It's hard to believe this is the 59th year, so it's almost as old at commercial television itself.
It's surprising no one else has picked up the idea. A world wide song contest would probably be unworkable: every independent country given, say four minutes to perform, that would be over thirteen hours. And I don't see a North Americavision Song Contest working - even Canadians are going to start channel surfing part way through the performances by all those little Caribbean island nations.
But I bet Americans would love a state-vs-state competition. We've seen that they love televised singing competitions, and they also love state rivalries, whether they have their genesis in politics or college football. And Canada could easily support such a province-vs.-province-vs.-territory competition. It would be nationalistic, cultural, and mainstream: a perfect storm for the CBC.
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