Aussievision celebrates its fifth birthday this year.
Originally a podcast from creators Mike and Dale, the initiative has expanded to a full year-round news site as well as extensive social media channels. This is all delivered by a dedicated team of 20 volunteers.
So how did we get here from our very humble beginnings, we look back over our five year history so far.
2017 season
On the 22nd April 2017, the first episode of our podcast was recorded, which was the very start of Aussievision.
It was created with just an iPhone and a bottle of wine. No mic, no theme music and a very basic logo!
We also started our social media channels, website and YouTube channel with some very raw footage and takes.
2018 season
2018 was our first full season and saw real growth for Aussievision.
The podcast had a series of firsts including theme music, full coverage of the national finals, the first guest contributor on several shows (Steve who is still part of the Aussievision team), the start of our continued review and rank mini episodes covering every country participating and we also celebrated our first Top 20 ranking, no.17 in the music episode charts for our Grand Final review.
We also updated our brand logo, covered the Contest from on the ground in Lisbon where we were joined by our friend and contributor Steve (pictured above).
Additionally, we ran our first National Final Countdown, our first Eurovision fan survey, began our moments of the year Twitter series and had our first interview with Australia's Head of Delegation at the time, Paul Clarke.
2019 season
The big edition to the Aussie landscape in 2019 was 'Eurovision - Australia Decides'. We saw a big jump in our audience thanks to our Australia Decides public polls and our individual ranking podcasts.
The podcast went from strength to strength going no.1 in music podcast charts of Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Iceland and Lithuania.
We began interviewing artists for the first time including our own Eurovision 2019 representative Kate Miller-Heidke.
Although we were unable to travel to Tel Aviv we still were able to cover the Contest from on the ground.
We ran our second editions of our National Final Countdown, top moments of the year (below) and Eurovision Fan Survey, as well as hosting our first ever event, the Brisbane Eurovision preview party in collaboration with OGAE Australia.
2019 off-season
We had to mention the off-season as this was when Aussievision took a whole new chapter. We welcome our first seven contributors to the Aussievision team and ran our first full off-season.
2020 season
In a season that saw no Contest, it was Australia Decides that was the highlight for Aussievision.
As a new team, nearly all of us were able to meet on the Gold Coast in person for the first time. Our coverage of Australia Decides was extensive with our public, jury and exit polls as as well as on the ground interviews artists and the man himself, Jon Ola Sand.
The lead Aussievision team of Kyriakos, Liv, Dale and Mike were due to be on the ground in the press centre in Rotterdam until the cancellation took hold.
Following the aftermath of the cancellation, we held online watch parties of previous Eurovision years for Aussie audiences and took part in multiple online versions of the contest in collaboration with other fans sites where we got to live out one of our dreams of hosting a semi-final draw.
We ran our annual editions of our National Final Countdown and Top Moments of the year and updated our brand colours to be a more palatable green!
2021 season
We welcomed the Contest back in 2021 and the Aussievision team extensively covered the contest from the online press centre.
We also conducted a number of interviews with Eurovision artists in the lead up and during the Contest.
Although Australia could not participate in person and we had our first non-qualifier, it was still an amazing experience and Montaigne did us proud.
In the build up we were privileged to join Dami Im for a special video of her favourite Eurovision songs of 2021, took part in the University of Queensland (Thunder and) Lightning Talks event and host our second Eurovision preview party with OGAE Australia.
We also celebrated our 250th episode of the podcast, held a radio broadcast of our fifth National Final Countdown with ESCape Radio and conducted our top moments of the year again.
2022 season
The highlight of this season so far has been 'Eurovision - Australia Decides' where most of the team were able to meet for the first time in two years.
We were privileged to interview every Australia Decides artist and again covered the contest from on the ground in the press centre on the Gold Coast. We again ran our public polls and our exit poll in the arena.
In the build up we were privileged to join Dami Im again for her special 'Eurovision - Australia Decides' pre-show with Sheldon, Jaguar Jonze and KEiiNO.
The Aussievision team yet again did a stellar job of covering all national finals and we reached a milestone of 2000 articles published and 300 podcast shows released.
We also updated our logo, gave the podcast a revamp with theme and segment music, and reached a new high of no.14 in the Australian music podcast charts.
We also created our Patreon for supporters to both get bonus content and also financially support Aussievision as our costs increase.
Our team will be in Turin to cover Eurovision on the ground for only the second time in our history.
We look forward to bringing you more Eurovision content from an Australian perspective for years to come!
We would like to thank all contributors past and present, all our Patrons for helping us do what we do, every artist who has been generous with their time as well as support from other fans sites, SBS, Blink TV and the Eurovision/EBU itself.
Meet the full team here: https://www.aussievision.net/about