Idol:
Acts with lots of temptation, looks, often really strong voices and an impressive stage personality. Amateurs looking impressively professional for their age and experience
Song material rarely more than on a Karaoke level. Almost exclusively cover versions, performed in a way often very close to the original, or close to some other cover version.
Rather narrow age base. Acts rarely older than 25 years, and also mainly aimed at the teen audience
Hardly very original music, although there is space for the occasional "alternative" favourite among the contestants.
Stylists do an excellent job with clothes and image.
Eurovision:
Extreme variation in the professionality of acts, ranging from acts that have no stage personality and doesn't hit the notes to really professional acts with lots of temptation and really great voices.
Varied age base. Some of the songs are aimed at teenage audiences, while others (probably the larger part) are aimed at considerably older auciences.
Exclusively originally written material, although more often than not this does not mean that the artist has written the song him/herself.
Some very special musical "schlager" genre has been developed for this competition that does not at all exist outside of ESC, or at least hasn't existed for 30-40 years. Several entries go outside of this genre's boundaries, though, often in ways so bizarre you could hardly imagine.
Several acts haven't even heard of stylists, apparently....
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 14 March 2005 20:34 (twenty years ago)