What is it ....

... that some people love, other people claim to hate, yet is watched by a huge slice of the population; that we've complained about not getting and now complain because we have got it; and that will cost 600,000 crowns per minute??

Yes, it's the Eurovision Song Contest Oslo 2010!! :-D

It's in the news today that next year's ESC will cost something like 211 million, ie 600,000 per minute, and it's not at all a given that NRK, our state-owned broadcasting corporation which is the contest's host (yes, that is in fact how it works), will be able to pay for it out of their ordinary budget. Only 40-45% of the total costs will be covered by the funding from the EBU (this is where the entrance fees go) and ticket sales and sponsorships. So ... still a ways to go. The Department of Culture says that they won't be coughing up any extra cash for it. Now NRK wants to get that money through more regular channels - by adding to the licensing fees that are their main financial support. Everyone who owns a TV in this country has to pay a fee, and that money goes to NRK. (A perfectly normal system, I might add ... most European countries have it, it isn't something that 'the socialists' have cooked up to be mean to us.) So, they want to increase that fee and get the extra money they need that way. 55 crowns from each eligible person. OMG what a staggering sum. :-D

Dagbladet online has a poll - I love their polls, it makes their articles so special, you feel like they're really trying so hard to connect to you, the reader! :-D - where you can say yes or no to whether this is OK. I said yes of course. The 'yes' pie slice turned out to be extremely small - only 4%! :-D So 96% think this is a horrible idea. I wonder how many of those 96% thought it was totally fantastic when we won in Moscow back in May. ;-) But of course it shouldn't cost anything for me, I'm so special. :-D These polls are actually pretty interesting, because they're very skewed ... like for instance, the poll they had on election night showed that more than 40% of the voters there were going to vote for FrP. But they ended up on slightly less than 23%. So when I hear people (often those with FrP leanings ;-) whining & complaining that Dagbladet is such a leftist socialist rag, I kinda lolz to myself a bit. Dagbladet staff may be socialist scum but their readers, methinks, are comprised to a significant degree of some other kind of scum. ;-) But that's another story.

Where was I. Oh yes, massive popular resistance to those extra 55 crowns. They've opened the article for debate and it's pretty hilarious. One person writes about 'the people's rage' against the licensing fee. I mean, rage? Seriously? The people's? :-D There's one guy who says that he's 'boiling' ... he must mean with rage too, I guess. Of course, most people fail to understand that it isn't NRK that's licensed, it's the TV set. That's why you pay, because you have a TV. If you fix your TV so you can't get signals on it, you don't have to pay. Personally I think the licensing system is fine and I very much appreciate having a channel like NRK. Three channels, actually. I don't watch it all that much, but I so appreciate having it. I always watch the news on NRK. I really like the fact that they aren't dependent on selling commercial time to get by ... and I really like not having to watch the damn commercials.

Anyway. There are so many complaints. Some sensible voices too, of course, but mostly not. :-D It's robbery, we're living in a communist regime, the license is anti-democratic ... In one way it's really entertaining. But in another way it's pretty scary. This is after all a pretty insignificant issue. I mean, compared to other problems we're having. Peak oil, anyone? Climate changes? Fundamentalism, culture crashes, environmental destruction? It's like the old saying goes, if this brownie is awesome, then what is the Grand Canyon? Just pay the damn 55 crowns and move on to more important things.

Personally I of course think we need to just do whatever it takes to put the show on. ;-) Not just because I'm such a crazy fan, actually. But the EBU's invitation to the winner to host next year's final has never been declined. Not by anyone ever. And our entry this year was the highest scoring in ESC history ... so of course we couldn't possibly be the first to ever decline. That goes without saying. But I do think that we ought to scale the whole thing down and make it a much more modest show. Moscow this year was totally off the charts. So yeah, scale it down, definitely. 211 million sounds like a lot. o_O But what do I know. It's going to cost money. And what do you think all these raging commenters and bloggers would say if NRK declined the invitation and we didn't get to have the final here after all? Something tells me that would be just as wrong. ;-)

Plus, people, we have to remember our friends. Cause you know what would have happened if we had declined the invitation? (Which now is not going to happen, that's right. All the haters out there, forget it, it's a done deal. Oslo 2010 woo-hoo!! :-D) If the winner declines, the runner-up gets the invitation. And seriously, is that a choice we would have wanted to force on Iceland in a situation like theirs? I'm pretty sure that if the situation had been reversed, they would have done everything they could to spare us that embarrassment. That's what friends are for. ;-)