In a time of the contest existence its rules has changed several times. The country as a participant represents its TV broadcaster.The Song Contest takes place in one of the member countries.
The Contest is led as following:
Each country participated in the contest picks up a performer and a song by using various ways.
- The performer should not be younger that 16 years old.
- His or her nationality makes no difference. Any performer may represent any country even not having a citizenship of this country.
- The live performance is required; lip-synching is prohibited.
- The song lyrics may be written in any language.
- The songs represented on the Eurovision Song Contest should be absolutely new. The song which was performed early than 1 September of the previous year can not be applied by the country.
- The song length should not be longer than 3 minutes.
Each TV company should publicate on its Official Eurovision web-site the national selection rules. Such web-site or page should be opened not later than 1 February.
On the contest broadcasting the commentators should hold back from discussion during the performance and also should not call audience for voing in favor or against of any certain song.
From 2010 the voting during the Eurovision semi-finals and final begins from the moment when the first song is performed and continues during 15 minutes after the last song is presented. The maximum number of votes - 20.
One of the new rules is the separate voting which is provided by the proffesional jury from each participating country. The proffesional jury consists of 5 experts in music sphere from each country. The jury votes the same as TV audience. TV audience and the jury will have 50/50 influence on the determination of the winner. Jury and audience votes are summed up therefore the total point for each country is concluded. In the case of draw game between two or more songs when summing up the songs that got max from TV voting will take priority. In a view of the jury and TV audience voting total results the best 10 songs from participating country in each country gain the following points: the first place gains 12 points, the second - 10 points, the third – 8 points, and the other places gain starting from 7 points till 1 points on the descending line.
The song that gains max becomes winner. The song-winner country gets the right to host the next year Eurovision Song Contest. In the case of “dead heat” the first place in the final will get a country that get max points from max number of countries. Traditionally the contest final takes place in the May Saturday on 21:00 p.m. according to the West-European summer time. From 2004 due to the increased number of participants the semi-final takes place on Thursday at the same time as the final. In September 2007 the decision was made that from 2008 the contest would be separated into two semi-finals and only the hosting country and the countries of BIG FOUR( the UK, Germany, France and Spain) would automatically get into the final.
