Eurovision

Eurovision (pronounced your-o-vish-on)

(1) The network of the European Broadcasting Union for the exchange of news and television programmes amongst its member organizations and for the relay of news and programmes from outside the network.

(2) As modifier, the Eurovision Song Contest.

1950: The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) (Européenne de Radio-Télévision (UER)).  EBU was formed 12 February 1950 as an alliance of public service media organizations, currently made up of seventy-three members in fifty-six countries and thirty-four associate-members in a further twenty, not all of which are in Europe.  The EBU is now best known for producing the Eurovision Song Contest although it broadcasts a wide range of programmes.

Blatant injustice, 2003

The Eurovision Song Contest (Concours Eurovision de la chanson) has been held since 1956; the format essentially that of the Sanremo Music Festival first held in Italy in 1951 and (structurally) little changed since although the voting system has bounced around a bit.  In the early years it was a quite earnest song contest which gradually became rather naff until later in the twentieth century when, quite organically, it transformed into something of a self-aware freak-show spiced-up by amusing political squabbles.  The apparent anomaly of Australia’s participation is by virtue of (1) being a foundation associate-member of the EBU and (2) an invitation to compete, first extended in 2016 as part of the sixtieth anniversary celebrations.  The quality of Australia's entries being in keeping with the spirit of the competition, they've since been invited back. 

Serious students of the event (and that is a niche not confined to pop culture) have since 2003 thought the voting system suspect after irregularities deprived t.AT.u., the Russian lesbian schoolgirls, of their deserved victory.  That actually they were neither lesbians nor schoolgirls seemed hardly the point.