Austria pulls out of Europe

In a protest at the new rules run up by the Eurovision managers, Austria has decided to withdraw:

According to Edgar Bohm, entertainment head for the Austrian public broadcaster, there are still too many open questions regarding the two semi-finals in 2008 for ORF to commit now to sending an entry.

"We must send our application to the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 right now, but at this time important points ... have not been clarified," Bohm said.

ORF programme director [Wolfgang Lorenz] has gone on record saying, "As long as the the Song Contest is a political parade ground and not an international entertainment programme, ORF has no desire to send more talent out of Austria to a competition where they have no chances."

Given that, apart from Norway, nobody's flunked as often as Austria, we'd imagine it's going to be a very long time before we see an entry from Vienna being belittled by a slightly tiddly Terry Wogan.