Televoting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Televoting or televote is the term used to describe the telephone voting in the Eurovision Song Contest, as well as for World Idol, American Idol and similar contests. Televote is the sole voting avenue in the Eurovision. During the mid-nineties, the European Broadcasting Union, organiser of the Eurovision Song Contest, introduced telephonic and SMS voting for competing entries in place of national juries. This way the voice of the television audience became crucial to choose the winning song.
[edit] Disadvantages of televoting
Televote strengthened the neighbourly voting, where neighbour countries would vote for each other. This existed before in the competition, but now it practically became a rule. This was evident in the voting patterns of Scandinavian, Baltic, Balkan, and CIS countries; Andorra would vote for Spain, Greece for Cyprus and vice versa. Secondly, this system of voting, gives the immigrants of each country so much influence that it has turned into an almost "known fact" that certain countries will give one or more countries high points. For instance Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium tend to vote massively for Turkey, while the immigrants of France secure high points for Portugal and Israel. The same goes in a slightly lesser degree for ex-Yugoslav immigrants in certain countries, including Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland, and for Russian immigrants in the three Baltic states and other ex-Soviet countries.
