The Eurovision winner is determined by an hourlong, logistically nightmarish system in which each participating nation conducts its own telephone vote (or in rare cases, a jury vote), with the stipulation that the callers cannot choose their own nation's entry. Typically, anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000 viewers per country phone in. These votes are then distilled into a baroque 1-to-12-point ranking system.
This voting process may explain, in part, why the US has never broadcast or otherwise shown any interest in Eurovision.
"I shudder to think what it would take in the US to have an all-American phone-in vote," said Karlis Streips, a Chicago-born Latvian-American who served as Latvian television's Eurovision commentator.
Americans "can hardly manage a presidential election," he said, adding, "If we had a Eurovision election, there would be chads in the ballots."
But this is not the only reason the contest will probably never include American participation. It has been observed that the more that Euro pop tries to sound American, the more distinctly European it sounds. Take, for example, this year's German entry, Let's Get Happy, sung by an orange-haired Phyllis Diller look-alike named Lou. Lou belted out the first line, "Last night at the discotheque," in a near-flawless R&B down-home American accent, yet "discotheque" is a word no self-respecting American rock star would say.
Latvia won the right to be the host of this year's contest by winning first place last year, and the Latvian president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, explained the importance of this coup. "We were behind the Iron Curtain for half a century, during which time we didn't exist."
Vike-Freiberga said she saw Eurovision as a sacred haven safe from American cultural imperialism.
"It is the one chance for pop singers, other than those who have been created by the grinder of the American entertainment industry," she said.
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