The 2010 Eurovision Song Contest took place in Oslo, Norway, thanks to the "Fairytale" ending in Moscow for one Alexander Rybak. 39 countries competed in the competition, which saw a German victory for Lena and her song "Satellite" (which was a major favorite going in); becoming Germany's first win as a unified nation, and the first win for a "big four" country since 1997. It was also remembered on the internet for an "epic" saxophone player.
Its format remained similar to the year prior, but now with the top 10 scoring entries in each semi-final qualifying for the Saturday final as decided by a split viewer/jury vote (last year, 9 were determined by viewer votes, along with a wildcard from the jury), and votes in the finals being a 50/50 split between jury votes and viewer votes as last year. However, this year, viewers could also cast their votes throughout the performances instead of waiting for the performances to conclude, as had been the case in previous years (and on just about every other talent show with viewer voting, to be honest. It'd surely make Ryan Seacrest go crazy)
This edition provides examples of
- Ambiguous Gender: Milan Stanković (Serbia)
- Anti-Climax: Lena was pegged as the potential winner by many prior to the finals.
- Obvious Rule Patch: The semi-final voting adopted the same 50/50 voting formula the finals began to use the year prior, and dumped the jury wildcard.
- Fans speculated that the runner-up Turkey could get a berth in the 2011 final since Germany already had one for being in the big four. Instead, Italy ended up returning to the contest, and the "Big Four" became the "Big Five".
- Protest Song: Get around the catchy refrain and sparkle shorts, and you'll realize the Lithuanian entry "Eastern European Funk" discusses Western Europe allegedly not treating Eastern Europe equally.
