Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

F*ck, so close in the end. Finland's Käärijä hoovered the televotes but the juries showed so much love for Loreen pitch perfect, sterile and soulles performance of perfection there was no room for real creativity, fun and joy of Cha cha cha as they left it 4th with a huge margin. A difference of 190 points was cut down to 57. So close. But how amazing it was to hear the audience in arena chatting Käärijä! Käärijä! each time Finland got 12 points and Cha cha cha! several times just out of pure joy! But let's not forget this was also Finland's second best placing ever. And even in Finnish! Finland scored 12 points from Norway and Sweden, 10 from Netherlands, Austria, Estonia and Iceland. 8 from Malta, Ireland, France, Armenia, Denmark and Israel. 7 from Croatia and Serbia, 5 from Belgium, Australia and Czechia. 3 from Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Lithuania and finally 1 from Spain and Georgia. A total of 14 juries left Finland without points. And I said all along Italy will end up ...

Today's news about the change of voting system went through fandom like an earthquake and showed once again the Eurovision song contest has the most passionate fandom ever. In good and bad, especially in bad. The truth is the youngsters don't remember - or know - the voting system has changed about a zillion times over the decades from on spot two member juries to televote to 20 member juries to anything in between. The televoting (since 1998 only) has been from five minutes to 10, then 15, after songs or during songs, depending the year. Even the scores given kept changing most every year from one to ten given out in various combinations until 1975 when the infamous Twelve points system was invented by a Finn and has been in use ever since. Even that has had a minor change as first the votes were given out in running order before they were changed to the more exciting one from one to 12 we know today instead. These days of course we only get to hear the 12 said out loud when f...

Ukraine received the incredible 28 times 12 points, 8 times 10 points, 2 times 8 (North Macedonia, Malta) points and once 7 points (Serbia) or 431 out of 468. That is certainly something that won't be repeated very easily. The European television audience really felt a need to support Ukraine and all I can say to that is Slava Ukraini! But the juries supported Ukraine as well. Poland, Moldova, Latvia, Romania and Lithuania gave them 12 points and Germany, Iceland and France 10 points, and they got 192 points in total, placing fourth after United Kingdom, Sweden and Spain.  What comes to the separate voting results by juries versus televotes it's remarkable how different they are. They totally agreed only on Spain (3rd) and less than five place difference on Armenia, Italy, Ukraine, UK, Sweden, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic and the very bottom ones. Moldova has a difference of 18 places, and big differences also for Portugal, Norway, Australia, Azerbaijan and Switzerland.  An...

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...

Now that the new season has started it's worth remembering how the televoters and the juries vote before we go any further. Then again, every now and then comes someone like Lordi or Salvador Sobral and throws all the statistic and logic out of the window and there we are: a "surprise" winner. Someone has had time and energy to check the stats and votes for the Top-50 televoting and Top-50 jury votes over the years and you can see them below. The televote winner is Italy's Il Volo with Grande amore - however it's the only televoting success for Italy, while Russia places 7 of its entries in Top-50, followed by Ukraine (4), Greece (3) and Sweden (3). Turkey would be on top as well had they kept participating me thinks.... In jury votes it's a bit different story: Sweden leads with four presences followed by Italy, Belgium and Australia with three - or in other words: all Aussie entries. Portugal's Salvador Sobral and Amar pelos dois is the ulti...

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...

Yesterday San Mrino RTV's Director General Carlo Romeo, besides giving us details on their artists and participation in the Eurovision song contest 2017, ccommented the fact EBU has not answered or commented in anyway their proposal to solve the televoting problem ( more here  and here ) in the tiny country. No news, and I'm sorry to say so. Not even the good taste or good manners by EBU of an email, yet it was a perfectly sensible proposal that would put an end to a stupid and vicious discrimination against San Marino. To double the annual fee of the Small States however there has been a lot of attention but even colleagues of the Italian subsidiary following this sector hasn't said a thing, I do not say to consult us but only even to tell us the decision beforehand. It's really sad that small states are considered at this level by Ebu. We'll see after Eurovision what to do next. Today EBU has finally responded with a letter to Romeo, rejecting , in...

San Marino wasn't really pleased - and with all the reasons in the world! - when EBU just made up their televote in the 2016 Eurovision song contest randomly by combining five other countries' televotes and thus overruling the people of the tiny state altogether and royally. Angry SMRTV told they were not even heard in the matter beforehand and told they have an alternative proposal and it's now made public and it all makes sense. In short: demoscopic jury, a bit like in the Sanremo festival. A certain number of Sammarinese doc who will watch at least two of the shows and vote during the televoting windows. This "panel" vote would then form the Sammarinese televote as the first choice. Only in the case of problems and failed results the EBU's alternative would be used as a back up.  SMRTV has studied the proposal in detail and it seems all water proof. Should EBU not accept it it's only because they want to be nasty as there really is no reason why ...

One of the burning questions in this edition of the Eurovision song contest was the new voting system, and while the new way of showing the votes turned out to an exciting success, one thing was forgotten after the initial anger and protests from San Marino RTV: How was the San Marino televote made up?  With the population of less than 32.000 and most using the Italian mobil phone companies the tiny ccountry never had televote before, and is unable to deliver valid one so EBU decided to made it up "using 5-6 unnamed country's scores to make up one", yet refusing to tell which countries were used. Certainly not the neighbouring countries that would have been maybe logical, as Italy scored null points in this "televote", something that is very unlikely would have happened if Sammarinese people would have voted, despite their historical dislike of Italians. History and differences apart, music united and music is the same. That may have cost Italy a place or ...

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...

Belarus has received 84 songs for their national final, quite a drop from last year's 110. Tomorrow November 26 and December 1 these 84 songs will be performed live for a jury (you can follow it live on tvr.by it seems) that will select the finalists (15) for the national final to be held on January 15, 2016 in Minsk. The names should be out on December 2. In the final there will be televote only and let's see how that will end like. Belarus is famous for scandals and changes and all sort of things before and especially after their national final..... Can they make it right the first time? What will Lukashenko say? Quite many previous wannabes are at it again from Alexey Gross to Janet , Chistyi Golos  and Napoli. And Aura , Sweet Brains ..,  Alexey Gross (pictured) has a long history in the contest, he has taken part most every year lately.... will he finally win? Here are some of his entries: One way love (2013), If I could do it all again (2014), Stand as one (2...

RAI has published the televotes given in the second semifinal and the final in the Eurovison song contest 2015 in Vienna last week. Remarkable is the amount of invalid votes in the final, where Italy was participating. My guess is they are mostly all votes for Italy. Italians still aren't believing the fact they can't vote for their own entry it seems :-) The fact that the invalid votes in the semifinal were ten times less where Italy was not participating only underlines this idea.... And one can't deny the diaspora voting is reigning also in Italy. The biggest immigrant groups or Albanians (nearly a million) and Romanians (over a million) scored over 50% of the votes! In the second semifinal San Marino scores the second highest amount of televotes after Poland (nearly 100.000 Poles living in Italy). Check below the full scores. 

If anyone should wonder if the juries are really useful, have a look at the Italian televotes below. Diaspora reigns. It's also rather astonishing number of invalid votes, 20,89%! Did Marco Mengoni fans, his #esercito , still try to vote for him after all?! Just in case... Anyways, the jury seems to have liked Norway a lot, Lithuania, Malta, Spain and Denmark, too. Not so impressed with Romania, Russia and Moldova and maybe they both agreed on Greece? Judge yourself: 12 Romania 23,20 (instead they got 1) *unvalid/Italy? 20,89 10 Moldova 13,79 ( instead they got 4) 8 Ukraine 13,23 ( instead they got 5) 7 Greece 11,94 ( instead they got 7) 6 Russia 5,01 (instead they go 0) 5 Denmark 3,20 ( instead they got 12) 4 Malta 3,07 ( instead they got 10) 3 Hungary 2,93 ( instead they got 3) 2 Azerbaijan 2,47 (instead they go 0) 1 Lithuania 2,27 ( instead they got 6) 0 Georgia 1,95 0 Norway 1,77 ( instead they got 8) 0 Netherlands 1,64 ...