Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The first semi-final of the 64th Eurovision song contest in Expo Tel Aviv, Israel has just ended and the combined jury and televote has given us the ten qualifiers for the final: Cyprus, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Belarus, Serbia, Australia, Iceland, Estonia, Greece and San   Marino ! I'm only surprised for Belarus, have her social media followers voted en masse in the ex-Soviets or what? Estonia also a minor surprise as it has been ranked so low by most everyone, I kinda started liking it in the end.... and San Marino has been certainly helped by the Turkish disapora and cult like status the song and the state have achieved... Therefor it's game over for these unsuccesful seven: Montenegro, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal and Georgia . I'm very sad to see Poland, Hungary and Belgium out. Montenegro and Finland were quite obvious, as was Portugal after the rehearsals started but a minor surprise is Georgia didn't make it in the...

Helsinki's Musiikkitalo aka  Music House   has the biggest permanent screen (172m2) in Nordic countries with the Helsinki's "public living room" just under its feet where tens of thousends of people can gather and enjoy various events, right next to the new and fabulous library  Oodi , and Museum of Contemporary Art  Kiasma .  Finlandia Hall , the venue of Eurovision 2007 Welcome Party is just around the corner, too. Musiikkitalo is organizing the viewing on Saturday 18 to watch the final all together! How cool is that? Something like that happened only back in 2007 when Helsinki was hosting the show. Krista Siegfrids and Mikko Silvennoinen are the commentators for YLE in TV2 and the broadcast that will be seen on the screen. They will also report all week from Tel Aviv what's going on in Twitter , Facebook and Instagram . They will be interactive with viewers all through the live broadcasts, too, on social medias mentioned before. Just befo...

And no, UK didn't us the "sure" 12 points. Finland also nearly missed the final being only 10th in the semi-final so the final result respects that totally. On the other hand she had a nice 14 points lead to Azerbaijan that was 11th. In the final only four countries televoted Finland enough to receive points: neighbours Estonia and Sweden, ever so kind Iceland and oddly Australia. No "sure 12 points" from UK nowhere in sight, however they gave us 4 jury points..... It's also remarkable Finland didn't give any televoting points to Sweden or Norway! Second (to last) again.  Here are the points received by Finland in the final ( televote / jury vote) 12 - 10 Estonia 8 - 7 - 6 Sweden / Israel 5 Macedonia 4 Australia / United Kingdom 3 Iceland / Sweden, Czech Republic 2 Estonia 1 And Finland gave 12 Estonia / Israel 10 Denmark / Bulgaria 8 Hungary / Sweden 7 Israel / Austria 6 It...

Salvador Sobral and his Amar pelos dois did not win the televote in Portugal. He did win the jury vote but the televoters put Viva la Diva's Nova gloria ahead of him. Somehow I think they wouldn't have had the same success. Not even close. Hooray for the juries who saw further this time! Where else the jury votes ruled over televoters wish (and usually got it right)? In Georgia the televoters preferred Oto Nemsadze & Limbo's Dear God placing Tamara only second (and jury only 16th!) I doubt that would have done any better in Kyiv really... Same story in Poland where Carmell with Faces was preferred by the televoters (but only 6th by the jury), and in Slovenia where BQL's Heart of gold won the televote but juries placed it low enough to keep it from winning. Maybe these both televote favorites would have done better? Maybe, maybe not. Jury ruled also in Sweden , where televoters preferred Nano's Hold on , while eventual winner Robin was only 3rd. Na...

 So, Finland finished 12th. Would have qualified with the televoting only, as would have Czech Republic with jury only. Portugal won both easily.Georgia was 11th while Latvia last. Bulgaria reigned in the second semifinal, even more convincingly thatn Portugal in the first. Serbia was 11th and San Marino last with 1 (one) point! Big differences here. malta qould have qualified for the jury, Estonia for the televote. Denmark was liften to the final by the jury. 

Russians are now pointing fingers at the professional juries. A total of 21 juries out of 41 left Russia with null points. Politics!? Russian media is spreading the list of countries that includes also Finland, accusing them in a hard way. These countries are Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Norway, Georgia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Israel, Macedonia, Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands.  Only Azerbaijan, Belarus, Greece and Cyprus gave Russia 12 jury votes.  Out of these null pointer countries most went for Ukraine instead: they got 12 jury votes from Poland, Georgia, Israel, Slovenia, Macedonia and Denmark, 10 from Italy and United Kingdom, 8 from Lithuania, 7 from Estonia, 6 from Switzerland, 4 from Norway, 3 from the Netherlands and Belgium and 2 from Australia. On the other hand Finland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Ireland gave null points to Ukraine, too. As did Russia.  ...

The Finnish votes are out like everybody else's here . It's quite shocking to see they only agreed on Sweden, Australia, Austria and France! Ukraine got nothing from the jury, the Nerherlands nothing from televoters....  Very divided outcome....  The Finnish televotes +   jury votes: Ukraine 12  + 0 Sweden 10  + 12 Russia 8  + 0 Australia 7  + 8 Austria 6  + 4 Poland 5  + 0 Bulgaria 4  + 0 France 3  + 1 Latvia 2  + 0 Cyprus 1  + 0 The Netherlands 0 + 10 Israel 0 + 7 Lithuania 0 + 6 Malta 0 + 5 Czech Republic 0 + 3 Italy 0 + 2

The semifinal results are also out and we can see Russia and Australia won their heats. Bosnia & Herzegovina and Macedonia were the unlucky ones who were the first ones to drop out. Estonia and Switzerland cme last. San Marino did reasonably well 12th but there's a huge gap in points.  Russia got the biggest score, followed by Australia and Ukraine from the other semifinal. Estonia's one was the lowest....  Finland was 15th, with shared points with Iceland so it could have ben also 14th.  01 Russia 342 02 Armenia 243 03 Malta 209 04 Hungary 197 05 Netherlands 197 06 Azerbaijan 185 07 Austria 170 08 Cyprus 164 09 Czech republic 161 10 Croatia 133 11 Bosnia & Herzegovina 104 12 San Marino 68 13 Montenegro 60 14 Iceland 51 15 Finland 51 16 Greece 44 17 Moldova 33 18 Estonia 24 01 Australia 330 02 Ukraine 287 03 Belgium 274 04 Lithuania 222 05 Bulgaria 220 06 Poland 151 07 Israel 147 08 Latvia 132 09 Geor...

Oops! Here we go again. Last night's jury final for the first semifinal is in a scandal, thanks to Russian jury member. She did so many things wrong that I don't even start to list them. In short she did a lve broadcast on Persicope during the Netherlands and Armenia entries live on stage, not only displaying how it all looks on television along with her votes. One in question is Anastasiya Stotskaya (33) who throughtout the broadcast seems to be more interested in her own appearance in on screen than the important and responsable task she's doing. On top of everything else she's actually Ukrainian, if that should make any difference when both Russia and Ukraine are among the tio favorites to win come Saturday.  Anyways it's also very interesting to see how uninteresting the jurors seem to be on what's happening, they hardly paid any attention to Douwe's 10 second silence as they were too busy joking around. One of them is talking on the phone while Arm...

If Italy wins the televoting record breakingly the same hapens in the jury votes but with Sweden. Sweden gains 9,1 votes from every jury in average and 104 points more than the second one, Latvia. Russia managed third but Italy is snobbed and left distant six with average 4,4 points. The Finnish jury is a good example: Italy was third most televoted but the jury placed it only 19th. What happened to voting for vocals and hit potential?  Anyways, I repeat now what I have said and thought already before: The juries are good and there must be juries but they are way too small. There needs to be more people. Five people is way too limited and small. There should be at least ten, or preferably 15 like the good old days when they were 16 for years. One's individual dislikes wouldn't count that much, and one can't over talk the other four to not to like a certain entry so easily and make all vote against it. 

EBU has released the rules for the Eurovision song contest 2014 today and while there are no major changes the jury gets underlined thanks to the on going voting irregulations speculations that really exploded this year.   Also, EBU will publish all the individual jury member votes and the split jury and televoting results right after the final. This should make most everyone happy! The jury members will be made public on May 1, 2014. This blogger is a little bit buzzled about this. What's the point? Isn't it easier to pressure and influence them if we know who they are? On the other hand, it also makes it more difficult in some ways. Maybe that's what EBU thinks wins in the end? The jury members, five of them in each country, also must work within music industry as radio DJs, artists, composers, lyricists or producers. They must not work for the broadcaster and must be citizens of the country in question. The jury must also be of sufficient representativeness of g...

EBU has finally released the rankings for the semifinals and final split by juries and televoters, here .  Denmark was a winner for both in the final. In general the juries favored Moldova, Belgium, Sweden, Georgia, United Kingdom, Estonia and France, while televoters favored Ukraine, Russia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Belarus and Ireland. Both agreed spot on in Malta and Spain, while Finland came very close, 18th and 20th. In the semifinal Finland was 6th with the juries, 10th with the televoters.  Wiwibloggs has counted down the differences between the jury votes and the televotes - this is maybe the most interesting data: Country Televote Jury Difference Romania 7 24 -17 Hungary 8 21 -13 Greece 4 14 -10 Belarus 13 22 -9 Ireland 14 23 -9 Iceland 12 17 -5 Russia 5 10 -5 Armenia 15 19 -4 Germany 16 20 -4 Lithuania 21 25 -4 Ukraine 2 6 -4 Denmark 1 1 0 Malta 9 9 0 Spain 26 26 0 Az...