MEDIA NEWS
STOP THE VOTES!
EUROVISION’s broadcasting wing, the EBU, states every year that the musical Olympics of Camp is “a non-political musical event” and “a contest between broadcasters, not governments.” Oh, yeah?
Israel’s televote-topping score (see Eye TV) was good news for the country’s Government Advertising Agency, which put out 37 YouTube ads of singer Yuval Raphael encouraging people to vote for her song “up to 20 times”, the Eurovision limit. A combined 8m viewers had seen these ads before other videos – more than twice as many who deliberately went to YouTube to listen to Israel’s entry in the first place. Spotify streams the day after the contest told another story, however, with at least eight countries that Israel ostensibly beat receiving more listens.