The Case for Eurovision on ITV

Here we are again. Two weeks out from the deadline for entry submissions, the BBC has finally announced that our representative in Rotterdam will be… the guy who was supposed to be our representative for the cancelled 2020 contest.

The news was met by disappointment among Eurovision fans on Twitter, and who could blame them? Just a week earlier, a send up of Eurovision on Drag Race UK — broadcast on the BBC, no less! — became not only a ratings hit, but an honest-to-god chart success for the winning group. When you're given a fun little Eurovision entrée produced by MNEK, it's a little disappointing to find out your main course is… uh, John Newman’s brother.

It’s been 24 years since the UK won Eurovision, and we’ve gone at least a decade without a song of any quality. It’s also increasingly obvious that Auntie Beeb doesn’t want to put the effort in; James Newman’s entries are the result of the BBC essentially outsourcing the song choice to BMG.

It’s been a dire time to be a British Eurovision fan. But here’s the thing: we can try to do something different. It’s time to tell Graham Norton to take a year off, and let ITV give it a shot.

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I know this sounds strange to British ears; the UK’s entry has been the responsibility of the BBC for the 57 years we’ve taken part, and if there’s anything Britain despises, it’s literally any kind of big change.

It’s a lot to take in, so let’s start with the national selection. This feels like the place where you’re more likely to see an improvement; ITV is basically the birthplace of music-based reality competition shows, and more importantly those shows have actually created successful artists.

Popstars: The Rivals gave us Girls Aloud; The X Factor created One Direction, which in turn spawned the horniest possible incarnation of Harry Styles1. An ITV show that pulled its Reality Show Magic to present us with a fantastic live singer and give them a proper shot at international success would be incredible — excluding, of course, the obligatory appearance of Ant and Dec.

Broadcasting the contest could still happen in full, with some really easy changes: the semi-finals get dug up from BBC Four and put onto primetime ITV, sandwiched in between Coronation Street and News at Ten. Get Lorraine Kelly (played by Lorraine Kelly) to replace Scott Mills and Rylan in the commentary box and you’ve got a fun slice of weekday evening telly.

Speaking of the commentary box — what of Graham Norton, the commentator of the final? Well, it’s just a case of swapping out the BBC’s older gay man for ITV’s — and honestly, after all the shit he has to put up with on This Morning, Philip Schofield deserves it.

And let’s think big — what if the stars align, and Philip Schofield gets to be the person talking over the announcement that we’ve won Eurovision? Well, we stick Schofe and Holly Willoughby in the O2 Arena, give Alison Hammond a few dozen shots, and set her loose in the green room. The sheer chaos would be international TV gold.

If there’s one thing ITV does spectacularly well, it’s popular, ratings-friendly television full of friendly faces on a Saturday night. So it’s time for the BBC to put its licence fee money where its mouth is and prove the might of Britain’s pop music industrial complex, or get out of the way of an ITV Eurovision Song Contest.