Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Here they are, a lot anticipated running orders. Finland gets the best there's to have after the allocation draw while Sweden... well, thrown under the bus . Considering Azerbaijan got the number 2 in the semi-final two switching Sweden and Portugal wouldn't hurt much in the first one. Except Portugal being the only slow tempo in the first half... Oh well. Nu gör ni! Finland comes after Italy and before Montenegro, it is what it is. And the fate in first semi-final is all the favorites are in the first half except Israel and after them we have only one in current odds among top-20 while the others are bottom-10 for the moment..... And they saved Serbia last not to scare the kids and the elderly..... The second semi-final two Top-10 favorites in the odds (Romania, France) are in the first half and then in the second one we have three in a row in the second one: Denmark, Australia and Ukraine and again we finish with three songs in Top-10 with one in the bottom-10. 

Sweden's Melodifestivalen 2023 has cut down the songs in the previous four heats (here) and it's time for the semi-final, formerly known as Andra chancen aka Second chance round. In previous four heats two songs qualified for the final directly, and the 3rd and 4th placed ones are here fighting for four places in the final line up. It may not be a big surprise I haven't been a Mello fan for years anymore; great looking show, usually also very funny and entertaining but the songs haven't really made any impact on my own personal playlist, so let's see what they have in offer. I haven't followed the heats with attention, barely watching them when run on Finnish television delayed so basically all these songs are new to me.  Theoz - Mer av dig *** Old school schlager and he's quite likable but there's zero emotion, just perfect choreography and performance. Sterile. But the song echoes mello of the yesteryears. More like an opening number than a competing e...

  From Lithuania to Malta, and from San Marino to Denmark.  Let the fandom have a meltdown over analyzing the reasons why a certain country is where but it's good to remember it's not only having a variety of genres and genders in the mix but also props and stagings have a significant weight in the decision. And of course they want to clue the audience to the screen from the very first moment and Lithuania and San Marino will certainly do that. I also suspect San Marino may have some heavy props to move around - fast to remove but takes time to set up.  Time will tell.

Sanremo Giovani returns to Treatro Ariston next February after one year's absence when only two tickets were given to the festival, but among the Big and the rest is history. Mahmood won it all. That won't happen again next year. Now it's back to basics and the youngsters compete among themselves and have to wait at least a year to make it among the Big, like Francesco Gabbani and Ermal Meta in recent years. Out of the names below, 20 will be selected in live auditions to perform in television in Marco Liorni's show Italia Sí . The 20 will become first 10 , then five . The five chosen ones will meet in Sanremo the two from AreaSanremo selection, and one from Sanremo Young, or the winner 15-year-old Tecla Insolia.  Among the names several familiar names from various talent shows or previous editions: Federica Abbate, and Giulia Mutti with Icaro aka Antonello Carozza. Leo Gassman, Matteo Costanzo and Nico Arezzo already have X Factor experience, while Samuel P...

The Eurovision song contest 2018 semi-final running orders were out yesterday and since then all blogs and sites have been filled with various analytics and statistics, so here's my totally fact based one on this nonsense speculation. It has been nicely ten years with the two semi-finals, and nicely five years since the order has been decided by the producers versus the draw, so it gives a valid excuse to do this. In the chart below first you have the running order number, then how many entries performed at that slot have qualified for the final out of how many, and finally that turned into %. And finally, who got those slots this year and therefor should have the biggest chances to qualify...... Yeah right. Well, this said, it all comes down to the song, the performance in the jury final and the live broadcast. Songs from every slot have qualified, and dropping the draw has made it even more even as seven slots have featured better and seven worse in the post-draw era. Actu...

  ... because there has been some different system for qualification in use..... If the Eurovision song contest semi-final qualifiers were very straight forward with top-10 qualifying from 2010 onwards, before it was a different story. In 2009 only the Top-9 qualified while the 10th qualifier was chosen by a jury, to a criteria only known to themselves. And they surely used their power with variable success..... In the first semifinal the qualifier would have been Macedonia's Next Time  (10th) with  Nešto što kje ostane. The jury decided to skip also the 11th one, Montenegro's  Andrea Demirović 's Just get out of my life and lifted to the final instead Finland's Waldo's People  (12th) and Lose control , that then placed second to last, 24th, in the final. Of course as a Finn I was happy for the sudden turn of the things :-) In the second semifinal it was ever more cruel: the jury chose Croatia's Igor Cukrov feat. Andrea with Lijepa tena th...

  This year it  happened to Georgia and Serbia. The dreadful 11th place in the semi-final. As for Georgia it was pretty clear with 16 points missing but Serbia lost only with 3 points, and Switzerland was only 4 points away from a possible qualification. Let's have a look at the closest miss outs over the past years. The 2011 edition was very close with three songs one point shy of qualification, while in 2016 the qualifiers were more than clear with a huge margin to the 11th ones in the semi-finals. Bulgaria 2012 - Sofi Marinova - Love unlimited The only tie so far with Norway that qualified having been voted by 11 countries, while Bulgaria only by ten. So Norway qualified for the final and Bulgaria was left out.... Malta 2011 -  Glen Vella - One life -1 point (placing 11th in the first semi-final) Armenia 2011 - Emmy - Boom boom  -1 point (placing 12th in the first semi-final, tie with points with Glen Vella) Belgium 2011 - Withloof Bay ...