Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

The Nordic team (well Swedish plus one Finn, see previous post here ) listened and judged the rest of the first semifinal songs. Thomas Lundin gave for the first time Finland full points in the history of the programme that started six years ago. He also loved Portugal while the other didn't and also Malta divided votes. In all the qualifiers for the final by them would be: 1. Finland 22 2. Bosnia-Herzegovina 20 3. Turkey 19 4. Iceland 18 5. Sweden 17 (in reality also Sweden got 22 points but Björkman took 5 points off as 4 out 5 judges are Swedes) 6. Malta 16 7. Romania 15 8. Belarus and Portugal 14 10. Switzerland, Andorra and Armenia 13

Czech.cz scored a big flat zero in the first part of the Nordic previews. It's the first time in many years the show has been going on in various forms. This year the judges are all from Sweden (Charlotte Perrelli, Christer Lindarw of After Dark, Marie Serneholt and Petra Nielsen) with the exception of Thomas Lundin from Finland. As always Christer Björkman is the host. They listened the first 9 songs from Montenegro to Turkey. So, the gypsy rappers from Czech Republic scored 0 points and comments more or less in line with word "horrible". Sweden ("could go very wrong", "How will it work live?") won, of course. Turkey ("heard before but works") was close behind followed surprisingly by Belarus ("good melody and vocals but serious styling problems"). Only Belgium ("tasteless"/"fun") and Switzerland ("radiohit of the 2000's"/"boring after one minute") managed to break the very equal series ...