Why the Russians won EuroVision 2008
Why the Russians won EuroVision 2008
If you read my learn a language blog you know my world is East of the Oder river. I am very partial to the Slavic world. However, I have to say the Russian win of EuroVision 2008 was about money. Why? Ok the Russians spent 1 million Euro to develop their Russian EuroVision team. The Russians wanted the next EuroVision in Moscow it means money. So what happened is Russians from all the former Russian allies Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia etc all gave the Russian team a full 12 points. Each country no matter how large or small has equal votes. When you add up all these countries there is no way they could not win. Now the Russians pulled their sms influence and tipped the scale towards there team. Maybe I am seeking this way because I personally like Bosnia, Finland and Ukraine better and felt although the Russian EuroVision team was good I did not think they were the best. Greece was maybe the worst, they were very lame and they came in third., go figure. I think it was because the clip that was played during the sms voting advert for Greece focused on the good looking girl, so those voting forgot about her teams awful performance. Ukraine was pretty good with second place. I think it was more the mathematics of where Russian expats live and vote. But all that said it will be interesting to see EuroVision 2009 in Moscow.
Tags: eurovision, russians
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June 3, 2008at 5:30 am
Hi.
Great blog. My name’s Martin Drury. I’m a journalist from the UK. I’ve set myself a challenge: to learn as many languages as possible in just 1 year. The aim of the challenge is to encourage people to “have a go” at learning just 1 language.
My blog has already become very popular with UK journalists, members of the public and has been talked about in the USA.
Best wishes,
Martin.
June 3, 2008at 11:31 am
I get why you’re annoyed about the Russian entry winning the Eurovision; I thought the song was okay but not good enough to win. People say it’s all about politics now but to be honest, it isn’t politicians and prime ministers etc who are deciding which country gets what votes, it’s ordinary people phoning in.
A lot of people vote for countries near them because they have family there, have friends that come from that country etc, because they feel a kind of connection with those countries. It isn’t a plot or a conspiracy at all.
Anyway, I liked the Greek song, maybe you aren’t a very big R&B fan but it was a very good R&B song. The UK gave 12 points to Greece, and I think this is because we hear a lot of R&B and Hip hop on our radios. I don’t think the clip at the beginning had anything to do with it.
Just enjoy the competition as it is! An entertaining night in and a (albeit shallow) way to find out more about the countries in Europe!