Year by year, Eurovision is shown in more countries around the world.
And this year, Canada has caught the Eurovision bug, as OMNI Television will air and stream the 2019 Contest in Tel Aviv.
Both the semi-finals and Grand Final will air on multilingual and multicultural television broadcaster OMNI.1 and stream nationally on OMNITV.ca.
While Canada has broadcast Eurovision before, this is the first time the Canadians will see same-day broadcasts of Eurovision.
Previously OUTtv had delayed broadcast the shows in 2014 and 2015.
Canada at the Eurovision Song Contest
Real talk, it’s what they deserve. Do you even need to mention that one of Eurovision’s most iconic winners, Celine Dion, hails from Quebec? She took the title for Switzerland back in 1988 with the powerful “Ne partez pas sans moi” and remains one of the world’s most successful musicians of all time.
It makes sense that 2019 is the year that Canada has chosen to broadcast Eurovision in real time. Let’s bear in mind that Katerine Duska, Greece’s representative, was born and raised in Montreal.
Katerine isn’t the only Eurovision star in the Class of 2019 with connections to Montreal. Ester Peony, Romania’s representative, also spent some of her childhood in the Canadian city.
Though Canadians obviously won’t vote in the Contest, we can still speculate over who of the 2019 Eurovision cast will capture Canada’s heart. Will French-speaking Canadians be drawn to Bilal’s bilingual Roi with lyrics in both French and English? Or will Canada stay loyal show some love for Katerine or Ester?
All shall be revealed in May, and if Canadians embrace Eurovision fever like the Australians, perhaps we’ll see more of them following in Celine’s footsteps and entering the contest.
What do you think? Do you think Canada is going to be infected by Eurovision bug? Is this a prelude to their entry to the contest? Let us know in the comments!
Good news.
In the past we’ve had Natasha St-P and also Engelbert’s guitarist from 2012
Now unblock it in the US now tht Logo is not showing it
Canada is more European than America anyways.
Elaborate. What are you basing this view on? Québec? In any case, being culturally “European” (whatever that means) is not part of the criteria. It’s a very dangerous road to go down.
i cant wait to get high on legal marijuana while watching the eurovision final in canada 🙂
oh wow i spotted the halsey reference
Ester and Katerine are happy
That’s amazing to here my country will be broadcasting it 🙂 OMNI is always the channel that airs international stuff so i’m glad they will be broadcasting eurovision! Just hoping it will be on live, and not on delay 🙂
It is not live it will be shown in the evening Canadian time (a 6 hour delay) at 9pm EST.
CBC is an associate member of the EBU, and Canada had taken part before in a smaller Eurovision competition in the past. 🙂
My user name says it all…
I mean come on! it’s the 90s, we have the technology!
I’m not canadian but isn’t omni basically the same deal as logo where it’s a specialty channel that not everyone in the country has?
No it’s on free cable . You can get it with a basic cable subscription or even with free analog if you buy an old skool rabbit ears aerial.
Deerlover approves. Amazing for Canada as its a deer loving nation.
As a Canadian Eurovision fan, Im thrilled by this news. I wish CBC would be the ones broadcasting this as they are more known than OMNI TV, but this is a step in the right direction. Once Eurovision is exposed to more Canadians, im sure our fan base will grow. It starts with exposure, and we havent had much of it…
CBC is actually the EBU associate member for Canada, but the contest is in the middle of the NHL hockey playoffs and that’s a big deal for them
I’m not sure that Australia has caught “Eurovision fever”…have the ratings reflected that? It still on a minority station that just can’t compete for audiences with the larger commercial channels. It has a loyal but relatively small cult following, let’s drop the hype.
Looking at how ratings are in Australia, SBS seems fine with the viewership they’re getting from broadcasting the contest, on both live (which would be understandably be low given it’s on early mornings) and same-day encore runs on primetime (where most of their audience would be tuning in). In consideration with what shows they had to face that night, SBS was averaging about 200,000 viewers from both their live and encore telecast of the finale last year.
From my understanding, talking to Canadian fans, the general public there have no awareness of Eurovision, whereas in Australia it’s a pretty well-known contest. While it doesn’t air on one of the big three commercial networks, it is on SBS which is one of the channels available to everyone in the country, and it also gets coverage in all the main networks in the lead-up.
Yeah, I don’t dispute any of that. I just think “Eurovision fever” is a bit of a stretch. The UK, by comparison, puts the show out on BBC One, its main channel, with arguably the country’s biggest TV star doing the commentary – and gets ratings in the millions. Yet it is deemed to not take the contest seriously.
I saw the Omni player playable in America or is it blocked? I will just watch on the Rte I player anyway.
You might be able to pick up the TV signal if you live close to the border of BC, Alberta or Ontario
Well, I live in Southern California, so that puts me way out of range. I’ll just watch it on the RTE player.
What about USA? Where can we watch? Will we be geoblocked?
The Irish broadcaster, RTE, has an I player that can play internationally including the US. That’s how I have been watching Eurovision.
Be warned, though, Marty Whelan is a very irritating commentator.
Wore than Graham Norton? Because right now I’m stuck with the BBC broadcast.
Judge for yourself…personally, I find him to be terrible. Graham has his flaws, but he knows when to shut up.
Anything has to be better than the Logo commentators…first NONE of the were at Eurovision, and second, NONE of them really researched Eurovision at all!It’s not that hard to sit and listen to the winners at least.
Normally you can watch on the Eurovision YouTube channel. I would be shocked if the EBU blocked the US.
It does since 2016 🙁
But what will YouTube do now, given that Logo has decided not to televise Eurovision this year? I’ve been watching it on SVT for the last 2 years.
The geoblock would likely remain because it wasn’t because of Logo’s deal to air the contest stateside that the block was put up in the first place.
Just out of curiosity, why was it then?
@James. Yes it was. It only came in when Logo started showing it there was no block prior to this.
I think it’s possible that the Israeli Network on Dish Network might carry it. They carried it in the past.
I’m hoping we’re not geoblocked, but in the event we are…last year I was able to watch the semifinals through SVT (Sweden) and TVM’s (Malta) live-streams. I hadn’t tried RTE, though…I’ll have to look into it.
If you have Deutschewelle on your cable, they’ll broadcast the final live across the world where the channel airs, with German commentary of course.
I would actually love it if Canada participated in Eurovision!
They did participate in Eurovision Young Dancers.
I’m Canadian (Toronto area via northwestern Ontario), and Duncan Laurence has already captured my heart – I would have voted for him in a heartbeat if I had the chance. I’m really excited that Omni TV is airing all the shows, being a bigger channel than OUTtv was it will give the contest more exposure here
Where SimplyNailogical lives!
i like cawnawdaw
Great news. Would be nice if it was live (it’s same day but still a delayed broadcast)
I will stream it live biut then it will be nice to review the contest again the same evening.
If only Celine Dion could one day perform on the ESC as the interval act.
That would be fantastic.
I love her soooooo much.
Replacing Madonna and enter Céline? I’m in!
Absolutely 100% YES.
Love Canada joining if they really want like Australia.
I am really worried for Celine. She is lost without Rene.
Celine is lost in space these days.
That is simply not true. Céline has coped admirably with the loss of her husband, and her career continues to thrive. She recently announced the extensive Courage world tour, after finishing her hugely successful Las Vegas residency. It is an insult to call her “lost in space” when she is raising two small sons – look at this recent Good Morning America appearance. She’s fine. Stop worrying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxzCBFStAJA