Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

YLE has revealed its jury for the Eurovision song contest 2019 in Tel Aviv. The vocal capacity of the singer, the performance on stage, the composition and originality of the song and the overall impression of the act are the guidelines given by EBU for the jurors. So, who are they? First of all Eva Louhivuori (31) is of course musician, singer-songwriter of Eva+Manu fame who were hotly tipped for Eurovision 2019 at some point last winter. Lasse Wikman (57) has written lyrics for over 700 songs for artists like Suvi Teräsniska, Charles Plogman, Yö, Yölintu, Neljänsuora and Jore Marjoranta. He has worked in various music organisations and also written various award winning tv-series and has been in involved in picking up the Finnish Oscar movie candidate before this.  Susanna Vainiola is a radio speaker with various programmes and variety of music she plays with little feelgood stories,  as well as popular podcast. Janne Hyöty is the most productive ...

EBU has revealed the jurors in all 41 national juries that will provide 50% of the final result, the other 50% being of course the televote in each and every country. As usual many familiar names among the jurors, but maybe slightly less than usual it seems. Among the Eurovision veterans or the artists who have already represented their country and now get the chance to judge others we find Michael Schulte in Germany, Kati Wolf in Hungary, Maria Olofsdottir in Iceland, Geta Burtacu in Moldova, Monica Anghel in Romania, Sanja Ilic in Serbia and the Tolmachevy twins in Russia. Yes, both of them so 2/5 of the Russian jury depends on their taste alone.... Among Eurovision wannabes or those who have participated in their national finals we have names like Dilan Reka in Albania, Julie Berthelsen in Denmark, Stefan Airapetjan in Estonia, Jurgis Bruzga in Lithuania, Matay in Portugal, Ula Lozar in Slovenia and Lina Hedlund in Sweden.  Two more very familiar names...

EBU has revealed yesterday the juries that come up with the 50% of the final result, but with new counting system for them:Each country still has a jury with five members Each of the five jury members still rank the songs from 1 (best) to 26 (worst). The combined ranking from a country's jury is now calculated based on an "exponential weight model". The better a jury member ranks a song, the more weight it will have in the jury's combined ranking. In other words: The lower a juror ranks a song, the smaller the impact of that ranking on the overall result, while the higher a juror ranks a song, the more impact that ranking will have. This is to even the cases if a juror puts a song last in purpore it won't harm it so much anymore, and the top ones get more weight. In other words: Divisive songs stand out better against average ones no one neither likes nor dislikes.  Among the jurors dozens of familiar names from national finals like Bryan Rice (Denmark), ...

The thing happened again this year. Like every year. Italians outrage for the neighbouring vote from Greece to Cyprus and vice versa for example, but at the same time they expect and demand votes from San Marino for Italy and yet themselves usually forget to vote San Marino (when they can). This year this war was taken to another level. San Marino's wikipedia page was altered right after for example, social medias were filled with hate and dislike towards the microstate and its jury was crucified. San Marino's vote was found nauseating, someone wished Italy cut their power supply for 48 hours to make all their food go rotten, someone wanted to tear the country down and make it a parking lot, someone didn't want to share his oxygen with Sammarinese, they wanted to build a wall around it, flush them down the toilet, move the country to Portugal.... have a military invasion to occupy them.... the list is endless.  So much that Sammarinese couldn't take it as humor any...

Today's big exciting news turned out to be ... well. exciting? Maybe. Yes. Revolutionary? Nah. In a way it's just adopting the Melodifestivalen (and a few other national selections have used similar way, too, I recall) reults giving system and all in all, I guess it's fine. In short, the juries vote and rank the songs as always. Their votes are given out the usual way with the points given out by national spokespersons. The only difference here is that now on thye will only announce the 12 points (instead of the 8,10 and 12 as before) while the votes from 1 to 10 will appear on scoreboard. For this we can only blame the hundreds of spokespersons over the years who despite strickt rules and time limits preferred this on sceeen time to compliment the hosts how amazing the show was and bla bla bla. When you hear it for the 27th time you want to vomit. Not to mention other nonsense that has been said and done in those precious moments (Sakis tsaziki comes to mind....) An...

YLE has revealed the spokesperson for the Eurovision song contest 2014 final. It's rapper-producer Redrama, who has also been UMK judge for the past two years. He's apparently quite taken by the honor and promises to do his best in the short but demanding task. Also the Finnish jury for the Eurovision 2014 has been revealed and includes Kaija Kärkinen, who represented Finland back in 1991 with Hullu yö . The other ones are lyricist Saara Törmä, producer and composer Rake Eskolin, radio DJ Jaako Hurme and Clarissa, who took part in UMK this year with On top of the world .