Talk:Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest
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Is there a particular reason Italy does not participate in the contest?
[edit] Refusal to participate
"Italians are passionate about their many singer-songwriters, cantautori. It's for just this reason that Italy no longer participates every year in the Europe-wide song festival called the Eurovision Song Festival."
"A few years back, when Italy came in a terrible position with a song and performance by one of their most treasured singer-songwriters, Enrico Ruggeri, they took their ball and well home, refusing to play with Eurovision any more. They accused their fellow broadcasters of catering to the masses' lack of musical sophistication and of politicized voting."
Taken from "Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site", http://italophiles.com/eurovision.htm. The claim is corroborated in several other sources. Note that inclusion of the above quotation may be an infringement of copyright.
CounterFX 22:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
To be fair to them, Eurovision is completely politicised, every country votes for their neighbours or politcal allies, Moldova gave their high points this year to Ukraine, Russia and the twelve Romania, despite the fact that anyone with ears could tell you how sh*te the Ukrainian and Russian entries were, especially Russia (Romania was pretty good as far as Eurovision goes). It's just not a serious contest worth entering anymore. Seek100 23:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but the Ukrainian entry surpassed most of the other contestants. It would be wise to have your musical abilities checked or rather, your ability to recognise true quality in musical performance.
[edit] financial reasons
The above seems quite credible. The official reasons are of course that the national broadcaster (RAI) is not willing to cary the costs of organizing the event in case of a victory [1]. Reading Candida Martins page cited above, I think Italy would do well to have someone like Terry Wogan carrying the event and not make it so damn serious. It's supposed to be fun, isn't it??
