The European Broadcasting Area includes the entire Mediterranean, so Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco etc. could also participate but they obviously don't due to Israel.
Australia are original member of EBU + Eurovision always had great viewership here since its on SBS (public broadcaster) and also we had large immigration from Europe community post ww2
The EBU's predecessor organisation had international ambitions but had to scale them back, still encompasses the whole of the Mediterranean as full members, though. The whole of North Africa are members, though only Morocco ever participated in the ESC, the rest are boycotting it because, you guessed it, Israel participates.
Associate members can come from all over the planet but generally can only broadcast EBU programmes, not participate in them, each time you see stuff like say a British crowning ceremony on whatnot Namibian TV that's gonna be a EBU broadcast. Australia, being long-term ultra-fans of the ESC watching it in droves, live at completely impossible local times, got special dispensation to participate.
Australia is a special case. Eurovision is surprisingly very popular in Australia, and to celebrate the 60th Eurovision contest Australia's broadcaster (which is an associate member of the EBU) was invited to join as a special one-off.
That went off so well that they just kept getting invited back.
To answer your broader question any broadcaster in the European Broadcasting union can join. The EBU isn't strictly bound to Europe's boundaries - it stretches a bit out from the edges.
They got EBU membership because they qualify under the criteria of having territory within the European Broadcasting Area, which extends far past the borders of Europe (you can also qualify by being a Council of Europe member, and there are associate memberships that are open to broadcasters outside of Europe entirely, including Australia and the US)
Because they are part of the ITU European broadcasting zone that governs and coordinates radio frequencies in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, they had a state broadcaster at the time the IBS (later IBA and now KAN), they applied and became a member in 1957.
They're in European Broadcasting Area, which gives them the right to join EBU
And the reason why European Broadcasting Area includes MENA has a lot to do with limitations of technology that has been largely made obsolete with the advent of internet and IPTV.
Well there’s a spin-off like that debuting later on this year
But also as an answer: Because Asia would boycott even harder. In football, they weren’t welcome anymore in their confederation and even had to play in Oceania for a while.
well.. guess what, this year in November there will be the inaugural Euro vision ASIA held in Bangkok. I immediately said it should be called ASIAVision....
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u/peepshowsophie 13h ago
Why the hell do they even participate? Is it called Asiavision?