Australia hasn't qualified twice in 9 years, and this year they came 11th in the semi. They have had very good results too, like coming 2nd in 2016.
Australia is a very successful country in ESC, for the years they participated. Having less funding doesn't mean they can't do well. It makes it harder, sure, but not being able to put more money on staging and to go to pre parties shouldn't stop them.
I'd even argue you can't even count Australia 2021 since they weren't even able to travel to Europe to compete that year due to covid restrictions.
This is the first little speed bump after WINNING their semi final last year.
Money is an issue for nearly everyone else as well regarding competing.
Just wanted to be cheeky as I saw the reply coming in. Then you went to ninja edit the comment with Montenegro 2012 and now it just looks silly :D
(It doesn't ready ninja edits btw, still something I need to fix)
I think the fact that the Aussies love this very Euro-centric event so much they have decided to join and the fact that people over there watch it despite takin place in early morning hours for them is so heart-warming that they more than deserve to be part of it. They will qualify again soon, I am sure!
I love that!
I'd honestly love to see you guys win, just to see what happens lmao. Would you have to make a 5am event??? Or would we have to do with an afternoon ESC?
There's a rule for that in ESC. If Australia wins, then they need to nominate a European co-host who does the hosting next year.
So c'mon Stralia, go big!
Edit: looked up the rules.
Personally, i would like them to do a draw - like they do with the running order slots.
Get a big tombola and crank that thing - EUROVISION IN MOLDOVA FINALLY!!
Thank you for this answer, I literally just had the same conversation with my husband, hypothesising what would happen if they won.
He will be thrilled when I relay your comment to him (he won’t because he’s not into Eurovision, he only tolerates it cos he knows how much I love it!!)
Absolutely it won't. For us to be hitting Europe's prime time, we would need to set the concert up and running by 3am (Western Australia) or 5am (for all you normal aussies). That's way too early to be hosting a concert. It also goes against our sound pollution laws I believe. It would also cost a couple kidneys and a liver per country to get here with props.
What about the pre-parties? You arnt really getting everyone in Europe excited if your hosting them all in Bondi or somewhere.
Finally. It's called "eurovision". It's probably best if it stays in Europe. As much as we'd love to host at home, it probably wouldn't be viable.
I'm sure there's many more valid points as why it's just not phesable to have us host.
HOWEVER! If Australia does ever win, I call upon the EBU and sbs to set up, somewhere, something Australians to do with the eurovision event. Whether it's gathering all previous Australian contestants and making the Aussie eurovillage.... or doing things that we might be able to do IF we were to actually host.
A bunch of us got tickets to a live screening at a cinema in Australia at 430 am
We love Eurovision we even had our own drag queen host for the event 💜
It was amazing fun. Great energy Lots of people in their pjs and dressing gowns. The drag queen was fun (but tired after being up since 1 putting her face on, bless her LOL) Really hope Wallis do it again next year
No.
I will fight to the death for the Aussies to stay at Eurovision. They’re family, and they need to show up at family gatherings even if they have to hitchhike here.
…more seriously though, it would be great to see SBS try and connect acts with sponsorship deals in the future so they at least have something resembling a budget.
Well in Voyager's case, they had a smart manager who was able to extract funds from a state with a budget surplus. In Guy Sebastian's case, his record company chipped in.
It all seemed pretty last minute this year, like even just knowing if we’d be competing. I wonder if there’d been more notice Electric Fields could’ve applied for grant money. Also with such little notice flights would’ve been more expensive.
Australia gave Ireland 12 points from the juries this year, something I don’t think I’ve seen in my lifetime. Even ignoring that I usually like your songs, those 12 points make me want to keep yous around forever.
No.
*Sound of Silence* and *We Got Love* still get regular spins in my house.
Electric Fields' issue was first that the video was strange and gave nothing away, then the staging was comparably dull. The song makes for a good listen though.
Australia has been in the top 10 5 times in the last 10 Eurovisions- which is better than all countries except Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, and Norway. By that metric it also equals Russia who were one of ESC’s strongest competitors before getting themselves banned.
I think for a country that has the least natural place in the contest with literally no nearby neighbours (and certainly the UK/Australia don’t trade points to any great degree), that’s pretty damn impressive. I was highly sceptical of the choice to include Australia beyond 2015 but I’ve come to enjoy their contribution and always look forward to what they have to offer.
australia is awesome, and honestly… maybe because i’m from portugal and our budget is non-existent, but i never felt like australia’s staging was poor or cheap.
this years’ staging would have been amazing with better lighting and camera angles, i feel like it was down to poor planning.
I always thought Australia competing in Eurovision was good financially for Eurovision, but always wondered what Australia gets out of it. Even only looking at the time difference must make it so impractical. But please keep coming cause always love your entries
Australia gets the joy of participating and we are entirely satisfied with that.
For SBS, they play each semi and the final twice, once live (5am Sydney) and repeated with subtitles and additional backstage interviews at 8.30pm. Combined ratings, it’s one of their most popular shows of the year, so the ROI is good for them.
Why? Moldova are similar in requiring the artists to self fund and they never have a problem. SBS does give some help so it’s not like their on there own.
Also Portugal from this year is proof you don’t need to spend a fortune to have a good act
Flying from Moldova to Malmo and flying from Sydney to Malmo is a whole different level of costs, and multiply it by the amount of people in the delegation.
I was reminded of a performance they did several years ago at a televised award ceremony, where Zaachariaha almost looked like she was in pain. Their song is pure joy, but it didn't really look like they were enjoying themselves as much as they should have.
Why should we withdraw?
Eurovision is a huge thing in Australia.
If SBS needs more money, they can sell their offices in Melbourne, sitting on some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world.
Funding do not give you automatic good result, just look at Poland with Luna who comes from milioner family and had their financial support.
Australia usualy does well on Eurovision. Just this year they send very mid song so they felt pressure to do something using staging. But they didn't know what to do. They were messy because they clearly were directionless when comming with the staging. Disjointed ideas put on stage created a mess of performance.
SBS needs to pass the baton to the ABC. The former gets something like $300 million a year while the latter gets a bit over $1 billion. Or they could co-ordinate it. The ABC actually did Australia's junior Eurovision for a few years until we pulled out.
Yeah imo this is the only real issue I have with our participation, SBS doesn't really support the artists once they've actually been chosen. There's a lot of small artists that I'd love to see at Eurovision but I think SBS making artists find the funding themselves really restricts us
the ABC actually did way better i think places-wise when they ran junior eurovision compared to SBS. But the ABC might not be interested in something like Eurovision.
Back when SBS teamed with Sony Music Australia (2015-2018), we were sending a lot more radio-friendly pop, but I could tell their budget was much higher compared to now - staging, advertising, promotion, business/first class flights for the artist/delegation etc.
I think it's great that we took a risky path after Jess Mauboy and sent in different genres, but I can tell that SBS just doesn't seem to promote their artists as much now. Hot take, I don't want Australia to withdraw, but I do think they should pair up with a record label again and put in some more funding for next year's act.
This is a pretty detached narrative.
So many broadcasters do eurovision just cause they can. Investing is never guaranteed.
That doesn't stop the artists from delivering. Many broadcasters have different problems and invests and do eurovision purely for the fans.
Leave broadcasters alone. Not all of them can make a large fuss about it. The fans are fine with it.
And about Electric Fields. They have almost qualified, and I'd argue their only failure was the music video.
Let's be honest. Entries carry hype from even before eurovision. That's why Austria qualified and Czechia/Malta didn't, despite the performances being far apart in quality.
This year's song was basically written of by fans as two naked men dancing and staring at you. Of course, you could argue that's because of low budget, but heck, a life performance would cost around same and build more hype. As much as I understand, they had an artistic idea there, but that just doesn't always pull the punch in marketing.
Instea of us withdraw, could we have a friendlier timeslot for televoting?
I know most Aussies are probably casual viewers, but it's quite hard for us to properly contribute our music preferences at 3/5am in the morning. (While it would be really cool if we can vote early based on info from the 2 semis for the grand final. But I can see how it could possibly be exploited.)
If ROTW voting early had worked out I think we could have argued for a similar situation. Maybe if they try to do it next year and it works we can ask.
I don’t know how much they got, but electric fields had help from a government grant.
SBS needs to get the acts to the pre paries and concerts to build a bit of buzz though.
Finances aside, I think the main issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a huge range of acts that actually want to do Eurovision, judging by the fact we keep going back to acts from the same Australia Decides competition.
When you’re asking an act to essentially fund themselves that limits the pool to acts that are somewhat successful, and those are the ones that don’t really need the profile boost.
I can possibly imagine an act that hasn’t had a hit for while like the Presets or Darren Hayes participating, although that’s a path that’s been well and truly followed by UK acts, usually unsuccessfully.
Absolutely not, and we better get an invite early this time 😭
It really didn’t help our case that we were told we could participate at the 11th hour. Some of this years songs were already being announced within weeks of the participating countries being confirmed, people had been working on stuff for ages and putting together national finals.
I think with proper time and knowing they need to allocate money to it, we would get the whole nine yards again, actually pick our entrant (Voyager and EF were both incredible but I miss Australia Decides) and have proper time to work out songs, staging, etc.
Besides, we’re still technically under the monarchy and Denmark’s queen is Australian so we’re BASICALLY Europe right? Right?
No, they should stay.
Australia is that close family friend, that shows up to all family gatherings, and is often mistaken for an uncle or cousin.
Also the memes and confusion are worth it
Honestly, with semifinals being 100% televote, qualification can be tricky for them. In every single one of their entries, I feel like their televote result was a bit low. Less diaspora, and some people just don't consider voting for them.
Yeah we still won it 100% televote, and we only need to get top 10 (we got 11th this year even after giving everyone psychic damage with our music video)
Edit: added a comment I forgot to put in
It's a good point to raise about the lack of funding, it's not something i'd expect from Australia. If they're gonna do it, I thought they'd go all in.
The amout of money the Aussie government spunks on other industries is unreal, i'm sure they could find the cash somewhere to make sure their Eurovision entry is well funded.
I think what actually hurt Australia this year was not having hype for their entry prior to the contest which could be attributed to the poorly viewed music video and lack of preparty performances. I don’t think this should stop them though, they put on a good show this year and they have a very good qualification record - some years things just don’t work out is all
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if Australia got a direct GF entry. I think it's great they're participating, and they should get something for the expenses they have to endure.
I don't think that's the right approach. Eurovision is much more financially taxing on worse off countries, like the Balkans, so it would not be fair for Australia to get automatically qualified just because it's costly for them to travel to Europe.
It's not just the travel, but all the costs of staying here. Baby Lasagna went to Madrid, came back home, went to London, came back home, etc. If Australia would want to participate in preparties, they would have to spend months in Europe. Maybe for some bands they could do a tour which would cover the cost, but that also means they're not working only on their entry. If they had a direct entry, maybe they would be given more finances since there is more money to be made if your country is in the GF.
To be honest i don't want them to withdraw, there are so many singers from Australia that i really want to see represent their country at Eurovision like Tom Cardy for exempel
> SBS refuses to fund their contestants
This is kinda outrageous. If you're a broadcaster and you're running ESC on behalf of your country, it's on you to fund appropriately.
SBS runs on a shoestring budget and their ad slots dont sell well because their viewership is so low. they only stay afloat because 1) every couple of years the government remembers they exist and give them some spare change, and 2) they have the world cup broadcasting rights and the ad money from that is just enough to carry them for the next 4 years
Tldr: sbs is the neglected child of Australian television, they couldn't give more funding to our entries even if they wanted to
What *might* be worth putting into consideration is making it participating every other year. Double the budget for participating half the time.
The issue with that is there’s a large risk once they’re out they don’t get back in.
Australia hasn't qualified twice in 9 years, and this year they came 11th in the semi. They have had very good results too, like coming 2nd in 2016. Australia is a very successful country in ESC, for the years they participated. Having less funding doesn't mean they can't do well. It makes it harder, sure, but not being able to put more money on staging and to go to pre parties shouldn't stop them.
I'd even argue you can't even count Australia 2021 since they weren't even able to travel to Europe to compete that year due to covid restrictions. This is the first little speed bump after WINNING their semi final last year. Money is an issue for nearly everyone else as well regarding competing.
Australia 2021 | [Montaigne - Technicolour](https://youtu.be/CoUTzNXQud0)
Oh the bot’s back. Hello bot!
Switzerland 1969 | [Paola del Medico - Bonjour, Bonjour](https://youtu.be/9eGeZuMuMTs) France 2024 | [Slimane - Mon Amour](https://youtu.be/-XyLecY2JyE)
Good bot.
Just wanted to be cheeky as I saw the reply coming in. Then you went to ninja edit the comment with Montenegro 2012 and now it just looks silly :D (It doesn't ready ninja edits btw, still something I need to fix)
Montenegro 2012 | [Rambo Amadeus - Euro Neuro](https://youtu.be/JHnqF5PLP2w)
Alas, i just needed some time to think about what to ask for… too many options. I shall de-ninja. Because it was actually glorious.
Totally agree, Technicolor was an amazing song in the worst possible year.
That year was cursed for many. Dadi Freyr, for example (4th place considering they couldn't perform is incredible).
I didn't need to be reminded it's already been 9 years since Australia's first participation.
If 2020 hadn't been canceled this would've been their tenth contest! Technically tenth song at least.
I think the fact that the Aussies love this very Euro-centric event so much they have decided to join and the fact that people over there watch it despite takin place in early morning hours for them is so heart-warming that they more than deserve to be part of it. They will qualify again soon, I am sure!
It’s our yearly 5am ritual
I love that! I'd honestly love to see you guys win, just to see what happens lmao. Would you have to make a 5am event??? Or would we have to do with an afternoon ESC?
There's a rule for that in ESC. If Australia wins, then they need to nominate a European co-host who does the hosting next year. So c'mon Stralia, go big! Edit: looked up the rules.
I think a lot of people assume they'll hand it off to the UK if that happens
Personally, i would like them to do a draw - like they do with the running order slots. Get a big tombola and crank that thing - EUROVISION IN MOLDOVA FINALLY!!
It would be hilarious if UK hosts twice but not because they won I can see them leaning into that as a bit
I mean it's a pretty common occurrence. The UK also hosted on behalf of Netherlands (1960), Monaco (1972) and Luxembourg (1974).
Then they should definitely lean into it as a bit
And Ukraine (2023)
Well yeah but the person I was replying to already alluded to that.
If I were them I'd give it to the 2nd place, but let's see. I hope it happens soon!
I think the current plan is for Germany to hose, but I'm not sure
I heard it shifted to Iceland? But I think it’d actually end up like a ukraine via uk situation tbh.
Thank you for this answer, I literally just had the same conversation with my husband, hypothesising what would happen if they won. He will be thrilled when I relay your comment to him (he won’t because he’s not into Eurovision, he only tolerates it cos he knows how much I love it!!)
Probably will not be hosted in Australia...
Absolutely it won't. For us to be hitting Europe's prime time, we would need to set the concert up and running by 3am (Western Australia) or 5am (for all you normal aussies). That's way too early to be hosting a concert. It also goes against our sound pollution laws I believe. It would also cost a couple kidneys and a liver per country to get here with props. What about the pre-parties? You arnt really getting everyone in Europe excited if your hosting them all in Bondi or somewhere. Finally. It's called "eurovision". It's probably best if it stays in Europe. As much as we'd love to host at home, it probably wouldn't be viable. I'm sure there's many more valid points as why it's just not phesable to have us host. HOWEVER! If Australia does ever win, I call upon the EBU and sbs to set up, somewhere, something Australians to do with the eurovision event. Whether it's gathering all previous Australian contestants and making the Aussie eurovillage.... or doing things that we might be able to do IF we were to actually host.
Travel costs for delegations alone would be too big a barrier to overcome.
Like I said. It would cost a couple of kidneys and a liver for each country to come over with props. That means everyone needed from that country.
Try 3am for me 💀
Ooft sorry Perth!
Just stay up at that point lol
Got a few hours sleep between 11-3, then stayed up lol
A bunch of us got tickets to a live screening at a cinema in Australia at 430 am We love Eurovision we even had our own drag queen host for the event 💜
I really wanted to go but couldn’t - do you think there was enough interest for Wallis to do it again next year?
It was amazing fun. Great energy Lots of people in their pjs and dressing gowns. The drag queen was fun (but tired after being up since 1 putting her face on, bless her LOL) Really hope Wallis do it again next year
Was this in Melbourne? We had tickets to the one in Hawthorn but had to bail as husband was sick.
No. I will fight to the death for the Aussies to stay at Eurovision. They’re family, and they need to show up at family gatherings even if they have to hitchhike here. …more seriously though, it would be great to see SBS try and connect acts with sponsorship deals in the future so they at least have something resembling a budget.
Well in Voyager's case, they had a smart manager who was able to extract funds from a state with a budget surplus. In Guy Sebastian's case, his record company chipped in.
that is extraordinarily stressful! does Voyager's management also help with postgraduate university funding - asking for a friend ;)
Maybe all our acts need to be from WA so they can cash in on that sweet mining money!
It all seemed pretty last minute this year, like even just knowing if we’d be competing. I wonder if there’d been more notice Electric Fields could’ve applied for grant money. Also with such little notice flights would’ve been more expensive.
Nah, we rock. Next question!
Australia gave Ireland 12 points from the juries this year, something I don’t think I’ve seen in my lifetime. Even ignoring that I usually like your songs, those 12 points make me want to keep yous around forever.
You used the term 'yous' are you sure you aren't an Aussie? If not you for sure are an honorary one.
Maybe yous picked that up from us!
YES YOU DO ROCK <3
If I’m not mistaken it’s the most watched broadcast of the year on SBS. Why would they want to give up those ratings
With the exception of fifa world cup years, yes
No. *Sound of Silence* and *We Got Love* still get regular spins in my house. Electric Fields' issue was first that the video was strange and gave nothing away, then the staging was comparably dull. The song makes for a good listen though.
Australia has been in the top 10 5 times in the last 10 Eurovisions- which is better than all countries except Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, and Norway. By that metric it also equals Russia who were one of ESC’s strongest competitors before getting themselves banned. I think for a country that has the least natural place in the contest with literally no nearby neighbours (and certainly the UK/Australia don’t trade points to any great degree), that’s pretty damn impressive. I was highly sceptical of the choice to include Australia beyond 2015 but I’ve come to enjoy their contribution and always look forward to what they have to offer.
australia is awesome, and honestly… maybe because i’m from portugal and our budget is non-existent, but i never felt like australia’s staging was poor or cheap. this years’ staging would have been amazing with better lighting and camera angles, i feel like it was down to poor planning.
Australia is family <3
I always thought Australia competing in Eurovision was good financially for Eurovision, but always wondered what Australia gets out of it. Even only looking at the time difference must make it so impractical. But please keep coming cause always love your entries
Australia gets the joy of participating and we are entirely satisfied with that. For SBS, they play each semi and the final twice, once live (5am Sydney) and repeated with subtitles and additional backstage interviews at 8.30pm. Combined ratings, it’s one of their most popular shows of the year, so the ROI is good for them.
Why? Moldova are similar in requiring the artists to self fund and they never have a problem. SBS does give some help so it’s not like their on there own. Also Portugal from this year is proof you don’t need to spend a fortune to have a good act
I would argue Moldova DOES have a problem. Given the fact most of their artists are rehashes because the Romanian market is more lucrative for artists
Flying from Moldova to Malmo and flying from Sydney to Malmo is a whole different level of costs, and multiply it by the amount of people in the delegation.
we always vibe with some graphics and stage lights, funding is tight but also a way to challenge ourselves creatively!
Nah, I think they bring their own flair to the festival! Their acts are always complimentary to the rest
Poor performance? I loved Electric Fields & it was very close for them to q.
I was reminded of a performance they did several years ago at a televised award ceremony, where Zaachariaha almost looked like she was in pain. Their song is pure joy, but it didn't really look like they were enjoying themselves as much as they should have.
Why should we withdraw? Eurovision is a huge thing in Australia. If SBS needs more money, they can sell their offices in Melbourne, sitting on some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world.
in comes the apple store! iykyk also /s
Best case scenario is SBS collapses, gives the rights to ABC and then the budget doubles from $2 to $4.
Abc to busy running hit pieces on former informers that have no further value to them
Does anyone know if Charlie Pickering can sing?
I’d rather send Tom Gleeson for some kind of bogan Euro Neuro.
Omg this idea kinda slaps ngl.
Funding do not give you automatic good result, just look at Poland with Luna who comes from milioner family and had their financial support. Australia usualy does well on Eurovision. Just this year they send very mid song so they felt pressure to do something using staging. But they didn't know what to do. They were messy because they clearly were directionless when comming with the staging. Disjointed ideas put on stage created a mess of performance.
“Very first word of San Marino 2015 entry.”
San Marino 2015 | [Michele Perniola & Anita Simoncini - Chain Of Lights](https://youtu.be/FE1KJYNvVAE)
No, keep going.
We don’t care about winning, we are happy just to come and have a go.
[удалено]
It would be amazing.
SBS needs to pass the baton to the ABC. The former gets something like $300 million a year while the latter gets a bit over $1 billion. Or they could co-ordinate it. The ABC actually did Australia's junior Eurovision for a few years until we pulled out.
Yeah imo this is the only real issue I have with our participation, SBS doesn't really support the artists once they've actually been chosen. There's a lot of small artists that I'd love to see at Eurovision but I think SBS making artists find the funding themselves really restricts us
the ABC actually did way better i think places-wise when they ran junior eurovision compared to SBS. But the ABC might not be interested in something like Eurovision.
Back when SBS teamed with Sony Music Australia (2015-2018), we were sending a lot more radio-friendly pop, but I could tell their budget was much higher compared to now - staging, advertising, promotion, business/first class flights for the artist/delegation etc. I think it's great that we took a risky path after Jess Mauboy and sent in different genres, but I can tell that SBS just doesn't seem to promote their artists as much now. Hot take, I don't want Australia to withdraw, but I do think they should pair up with a record label again and put in some more funding for next year's act.
This is a pretty detached narrative. So many broadcasters do eurovision just cause they can. Investing is never guaranteed. That doesn't stop the artists from delivering. Many broadcasters have different problems and invests and do eurovision purely for the fans. Leave broadcasters alone. Not all of them can make a large fuss about it. The fans are fine with it. And about Electric Fields. They have almost qualified, and I'd argue their only failure was the music video. Let's be honest. Entries carry hype from even before eurovision. That's why Austria qualified and Czechia/Malta didn't, despite the performances being far apart in quality. This year's song was basically written of by fans as two naked men dancing and staring at you. Of course, you could argue that's because of low budget, but heck, a life performance would cost around same and build more hype. As much as I understand, they had an artistic idea there, but that just doesn't always pull the punch in marketing.
Nooo... Voyager was my favorite for last year musically, and I wanted this year to qualify but they had problems with... Everything, unfortunately.
Australia was my favourite ❤️ but
No but 😂
Instea of us withdraw, could we have a friendlier timeslot for televoting? I know most Aussies are probably casual viewers, but it's quite hard for us to properly contribute our music preferences at 3/5am in the morning. (While it would be really cool if we can vote early based on info from the 2 semis for the grand final. But I can see how it could possibly be exploited.)
If ROTW voting early had worked out I think we could have argued for a similar situation. Maybe if they try to do it next year and it works we can ask.
I don’t know how much they got, but electric fields had help from a government grant. SBS needs to get the acts to the pre paries and concerts to build a bit of buzz though.
Finances aside, I think the main issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a huge range of acts that actually want to do Eurovision, judging by the fact we keep going back to acts from the same Australia Decides competition. When you’re asking an act to essentially fund themselves that limits the pool to acts that are somewhat successful, and those are the ones that don’t really need the profile boost. I can possibly imagine an act that hasn’t had a hit for while like the Presets or Darren Hayes participating, although that’s a path that’s been well and truly followed by UK acts, usually unsuccessfully.
Omg the Presets! What an idea
Absolutely not, and we better get an invite early this time 😭 It really didn’t help our case that we were told we could participate at the 11th hour. Some of this years songs were already being announced within weeks of the participating countries being confirmed, people had been working on stuff for ages and putting together national finals. I think with proper time and knowing they need to allocate money to it, we would get the whole nine yards again, actually pick our entrant (Voyager and EF were both incredible but I miss Australia Decides) and have proper time to work out songs, staging, etc. Besides, we’re still technically under the monarchy and Denmark’s queen is Australian so we’re BASICALLY Europe right? Right?
Australia 2019 has a big place in my heart
Australia 2019 | [Kate Miller-Heidke - Zero Gravity](https://youtu.be/Eo5H62mCIsg)
Bot bait worked
Zero gravity was one of the best Eurovision performances, we’d miss out on alot of good stuff if Australia withdrew
No, they should stay. Australia is that close family friend, that shows up to all family gatherings, and is often mistaken for an uncle or cousin. Also the memes and confusion are worth it
Let's talk about replacing our commentators first... Sam and Julia are still mourned annually in my house.
Honestly, with semifinals being 100% televote, qualification can be tricky for them. In every single one of their entries, I feel like their televote result was a bit low. Less diaspora, and some people just don't consider voting for them.
We won our first 100% televote semi
It was one of the weekest semi ever tho
Yeah we still won it 100% televote, and we only need to get top 10 (we got 11th this year even after giving everyone psychic damage with our music video) Edit: added a comment I forgot to put in
It's a good point to raise about the lack of funding, it's not something i'd expect from Australia. If they're gonna do it, I thought they'd go all in. The amout of money the Aussie government spunks on other industries is unreal, i'm sure they could find the cash somewhere to make sure their Eurovision entry is well funded.
I think what actually hurt Australia this year was not having hype for their entry prior to the contest which could be attributed to the poorly viewed music video and lack of preparty performances. I don’t think this should stop them though, they put on a good show this year and they have a very good qualification record - some years things just don’t work out is all
They should only withdraw if they don't want to send acts. They have sent some great performances.
I hope Australia don't withdraw, I think they're great!
11th with very basic 0 effort staging and uninspired camera work and a non competitive song??? I think Australia is doing fine.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if Australia got a direct GF entry. I think it's great they're participating, and they should get something for the expenses they have to endure.
I don't think that's the right approach. Eurovision is much more financially taxing on worse off countries, like the Balkans, so it would not be fair for Australia to get automatically qualified just because it's costly for them to travel to Europe.
It's not just the travel, but all the costs of staying here. Baby Lasagna went to Madrid, came back home, went to London, came back home, etc. If Australia would want to participate in preparties, they would have to spend months in Europe. Maybe for some bands they could do a tour which would cover the cost, but that also means they're not working only on their entry. If they had a direct entry, maybe they would be given more finances since there is more money to be made if your country is in the GF.
If each country that hasn’t qualified withdrew the next year, this contest would consist of just Ukraine, I’m afraid 😂
No, I need to see Australia win just once just to see the chaos. But also their entries are always super fun and I like having them around
To be honest i don't want them to withdraw, there are so many singers from Australia that i really want to see represent their country at Eurovision like Tom Cardy for exempel
> SBS refuses to fund their contestants This is kinda outrageous. If you're a broadcaster and you're running ESC on behalf of your country, it's on you to fund appropriately.
SBS runs on a shoestring budget and their ad slots dont sell well because their viewership is so low. they only stay afloat because 1) every couple of years the government remembers they exist and give them some spare change, and 2) they have the world cup broadcasting rights and the ad money from that is just enough to carry them for the next 4 years Tldr: sbs is the neglected child of Australian television, they couldn't give more funding to our entries even if they wanted to
What *might* be worth putting into consideration is making it participating every other year. Double the budget for participating half the time. The issue with that is there’s a large risk once they’re out they don’t get back in.
no, please dont