Last week saw the EBU announce the ‘split vote‘ results of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, proudly declaring that both the televote and the juries had voted Loreen’s Euphoria as the winning song.
It has led to a huge amount of discussion in Eurovision circles, both around the areas where the televote and the juries disagreed, the merits of the 50/50 voting system, and whether we should continue to have the juries involved.
But there’s another worry in the back of the minds of us here at ESC Insight. Confidence in the jury system has never been fully tested, and when you look at the potential problems, the EBU need to be thinking proactively to protect the integrity of the Eurovision results.
Why The Juries Came Back
It’s worth reminding ourselves why the juries returned for the 2009 Contest. Due to the lingering issues of cultural similarities, diaspora, and musical tastes, many people felt that the result of the Eurovision Song Contest was decided not by the show on the night, but by other factors in human nature.
Look at the run of winners of the 100% public voting structure in the final – Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Ukraine, Greece, Finland, Serbia, Russia – it’s hard to spot any justification for complaints about a bias in the results towards a specific geographic region. It’s only when you look further down the results table you start to see issues beyond the quality of the song having an effect, and especially in the context of qualification out of the semi-finals.
This came to a head in the semi-final of 2007, the last year of a single semi-final, where none of the qualifiers came from the ‘Old Western’ countries. In the words of many, something had to be done. Doubling the number of semi-finals provided a more geographically diverse mix of qualifiers, and the back-up juries started to come into play, being used to choose the final ticket to the Final.
After Russia’s victory in 2008 was greeted by many as “a political result”, the return of the jury to the Grand Final was almost assured, with the EBU settling on the 50/50 format in use.
Svante Stockselius
Speaking in 2009, then Executive Supervisor Svante Stockselius explained the reasons for returning to a 50/50 vote: “…in the past years the back up juries and televoters have disagreed more about the results, and to try and cut back the effect of so called diaspora voting.” With the equal weighting of jury and televotes now in place, the victory of Norway and good results from the ‘old west’, their return was heralded as a success. Now, after the 2012 Song Contest, there is talk of changing the voting system because the juries are not working.
Well I’m going to disagree here. The jury system is working exactly as many want it to. But there is still a lot of room for improvement.
The Jury Is Eurovision’s Greatest Shield
Let’s look at some of the positive effects that have come from the jury system over the last few years.
Even on a 100% televote, Lena’s “Satellite” would still have won the Contest in 2010, and we wouldn’t have seen a different winner because of the jury. What we have seen is a slight re-organisation of the lower rankings. It’s rather subjective, but the generally-better songs are getting slightly better results post-2009. Take Spain this year – Pastora Soler performed a very technical song, was rewarded by the juries, and gave Spain their best result in years. France also received strong jury marks, pulling them up from a potential nul points from a televote.
Eurovision songs can be more than three minutes of accessible fluffy pop with a strong irrational fan-base that will always get the televote for them just because of who they are (cough, ‘Waterline’). Songs that reach beyond the bubblegum pop should be doing well at Eurovision. That’s one area where the Jury can help. If you send a bad song, or perform badly, the Jury will tend to mark you down. On the flip side, send a good song and perform it well, then you’ll tend to get the marks from the jury.
You’ll still need to have a stonker of a song to claim victory, but take the Contest seriously with a respectable song and performance, and you should (hopefully) get a respectable result, diaspora and cultural voting aside. I don’t think the Jury system will be leaving Eurovision in the near future.
Juries and televoters disagreed over Gaitana
It would be nice to see the working
While the EBU have released ‘the split result’, it’s a nice little piece of misdirection. The numbers given out by the EBU show two score charts… what would happen if the televote was 100% of the vote, and what wold happen if the jury vote was 100% of the vote.
Unfortunately that’s not how the combined vote at the Eurovision Song Contest works. There is no direct or indirect formula to take the ‘televote’ of 343 points awarded to Sweden in this year’s Contest, and add it to the ‘jury’ vote of 296 points, and get an answer of 372 points (the final mark Loreen achieved). That’s because the combining of the jury and televoting happens not at the very end of the process, but at the national level, allowing each country to rank the entries and allocate their ten scores at that point.
To give a slightly silly example, you could have a country top the voting from 30 juries, giving it a score of 360 points in a published ‘jury split’. You could have a different song score 360 points in the same way (thirty douze points) from the televote split published by the EBU.
Okay, two countries with the same vote in the two splits (as released by the EBU). But what could the result on the night be? When you calculate the 50/50 split at the national level, it’s possible for the song that tops the televote poll to get thirty of the top marks for a final score of 360 when added to the jury placings. At the same time the jury favourite could have no support from the public, and end up with just 60 points.
How about the question of voter distribution? It’s impossible to tell if a nation’s hypothetical split score is due to receiving a high number of points from a small handful of juries or televotes, or a small number of points from a large number of countries. By hiding this working from the public, and making it almost impossible to extract the original jury and televote intentions from ‘the split’, the EBU fails to provide a clear and open picture of how the jury and the televoters are acting in each country. A huge imbalance could point to diaspora voting, a huge cultural vote, or in the case of an unbalanced jury, something more subtle at work.
Thankfully many broadcasters have released their own splits, to which we can only say “thank you”. By making it harder to see how the voting is going, the EBU are shielding the Song Contest from the dissent and anger that many saw in the results generated in the 2004-2008 period, but by doing so they could create a very incendiary situation in future contests.
What Should We Do In The Future
We have a winner for 2012, we have some numbers from the EBU, so why should we have more numbers? Why should the EBU take time to release all the voting information?
Any competition derives confidence from having a result that is fair and equitable to every entrant, and the Eurovision Song Contest is no exception. At the moment, the 50/50 voting system is one that is generally accepted, but there has never been a question over the result. What if the 2011 result had been subtly different and the victory given to the jury favourite of Italy, even though the televote was for Azerbaijan? One day, there may well be some spirited discussions
That is the moment where confidence in the scoring system will be needed most, and the opacity of the current jury system stands in the way of this. It would be far better to implement changes that promote transparency and clear rules in advance of any awkward situations. Therefore, I believe three changes need to be made to the Jury system.
There should be total transparency in how the scoring is calculated. The EBU should release the rankings from both the televote and the jury on a country by country basis, and it should not stop at the top ten scoring positions, it should go from the first to the last country. And there should be a commitment to release these within five working days from the end of the Contest.
The minimum number of jury members should be raised. Currently juries are made up of five members. This places far too much power in the hands of one person. I would think that a jury of at least ten, preferably twenty people, with a mix of ages and gender dictated by the EBU (as it once was), and with some from inside the music industry, and some from outside, again to a ratio put in place by the EBU.
Clear instructions should be given to the jury and published in advance. There is a mythical idea of what juries are asked to look for, what should be rewarded, and what should be ignored. The truth is far more mundane – it’s five people in a room asked to rank the songs. I think Eurovision should demand more from their juries. Be it technical skill, presentation, choreography, relevance to the modern charts, the criteria for judging should be laid out in full and made public.
Order, Order!
The jury system does work, but it has the potential to cause an upset. The EBU should be pro-active and think about ways to improve the jury system before that upset happens.
The three steps above would be a good place to start.
What twaddle, your unfounded attack of Jedward citing they only do well on the televote is rather short sighted and ignoring facts.
In 2011 the televoters placed Jedward 10th, the Jury placed Jedward 5th!!!
Ciaran, and this year they were placed 10th in televote and 25th in the Jury. Not twaddle 😉
The doubt in the system means that a song that does well in either system could be trumped by the other when it is added together at a national level to produce the result read out on the night. If this happened across many countries, you could see for example, a song that has done well with juries across all countries receive a low score after having being cancelled out by high televotes in those countries. This wouldn’t be evident from the split published by the EBU…..
I fully subscribe to the proposal. Especially as it has been done before (2010, I think)
We need to have clarity from the point of the reputation of the contest and the EBU. The one other thing I would add is when the jury’s judge the songs, making the jury vote on one performance and the public on another is always going to cause issues. An easy way around this would be to make the interval longer, this gives the jury enough time to work out their points and then enough time for the televote to be combined. Yes the intersting vote announcing may have to go, but the points announced will be a better representation of what people thought of the performance.
A comment with a bit of Devil’s advocate to it:
The reforms proposed in the article benefit … whom? Does the general public even care about the televote/jury split? Will having the results be more or less transparent have any effect on the contest’s success or popularity, even in the event of a controversial result?
Seems to me that “the potential to cause an upset” only applies to the fanbase. How important is that in the grand scheme of things? The mainstream press seems to be quite capable of getting as upset about the results as they want to be, without knowing (or understanding or caring) how the points are being divvied up.
As a fan, I’m mostly on board with the recommendations in the article, in particular stating the jury judging criteria. (To be honest, I’m amazed that this isn’t already in place.) But at the same time, I’m not sure you’d be solving anything with these recommendations, other than giving the most rabid fans something else to be rabid about. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
PS – “Strong irrational fanbase” … and then there’s that first comment – with not one, not two, but three exclamation points. I LOL’d!!!!
Eric Graf has actually said everything I was thinking. Everything.
I concur with the first two, but the third needs careful handling.
Explicit guidelines are good, particularly in the sense of competing within a meaningful framework, but they need to be sufficiently abstract that “quality” is defined at the national level without the EBU appearing as arbiters of taste.
I’m not so sure about demanding juries adhere to a common and specific checklist of criteria. I especially don’t want to see (and I’m sure you don’t mean) each aspect of performance allocated a strict proportion of the score, so that every act has to aim for the same balance.
Is the ideal that sufficient objectivity be acheived that every jury produces the same result?
Or perhaps it’s meant as a lever with which the EBU predetermines what kind of result is best for the future of the contest and tries to push in that direction?
One can make a case for either, but we should begin by deciding what juries are for before specifying how to make them fulfil that purpose.
Another aspect is that, for some possible criteria, appealing to the general public IS the measure of quality. Choreography, for instance, is not being entered into a dance contest to be judged by professional dancers, but is a tool for communicating with the audience. Same for wardrobe etc. If it works, it’s right.
In my opinion, the juries should be voting mainly on the actual songs, having gotten to know them about a month in advance. Broadcasters could easily make that part of their job description.
The vast majority of televotes are based on a live performance, where high calibre compositions like Korake ti Znam fall flat because they don’t “fill the arena” and Russian grannies become the third highest scoring entry ever.
Juries should still be watching the performance so that they can mark down poor performances, just as the hardcore fans would, but I believe they should have a pre-concieved idea of what songs they are going to vote for before the rehearsal is shown to them.
Frankly, this year, it felt like the vote for the actual recorded songs was almost non-existent. The only country that seems to have scored more than their final performance warranted was France. I do also still think that it was pretty crap of the juries to place the UK last. Ok, so it did sound a bit too laid back on the night, but it was nowhere near the worst!
I’m with Ben.
I expect juries to spend time with the song (in the particular arrangement and vocal expression submitted) developing some sense of how good it is as intended, so they come to the performance already primed for what it should be aiming for.
Using Ben’s examples (and assuming juries would agree with me), “Korake ti Znam” would rate highly before the live performance, and about the same after. “Echo” would also rate pretty well before, but drop somewhat after.
(But we don’t want juries rating songs based on how well they expect them to do in the televote, as fans often do.)
The jury final just creates an awkward rift with public perception, and turns up far too often in fan discussion as yet another technical wrinkle that detracts from the simple ideal. Given that jurors should already have done the sophisticated part, I don’t believe it would take long for them to make relatively simple post-performance adjustments and compile the results.
I have made up my own voting system in the ESC. I think that we should take emphasis on a number of procent. I think that a number of points form viewers should be connected with a number of procent which given song was received in this voting.. So, if (for example) Turkey will be receive of 50% in the voting of German public, it finally gets 50 points from televoting (not 12 points). The same points will receive song which will turn out the best in the voting of German jury. Then a leader of the German jury voting will be receive by 50 points for the first place. In conclusion, a number of procents in the public voting is connected with the finally points form jury. Therefore, the more procent will receive the first song in the public voting, the more points will receive first song in the jury voting and then consistently 2-nd, 3-rd and others, as to 25-th place. Not 10 songs, but all songs can get at least 1 point then both in jury and televoting results.
Example:
German voting:
1) Turkey – 50% = 50 points
2) Russia – 25% = 25 points
3) Serbia – 15%= 15 points
4)….(to 25-th place)
German jury:
1) Sweden – 50 points
2) Estonia = 25 points
3) Iceland = 15 points
4) …. (to 25-th place)
And, then we can sum up.
But it’s kind of sticking the whole contest between a rock and a hard place if you bring in juries to help mediate semi-biased televoting, and then complain the juries are creating a rift in public perception.
The fact we’re all gonna have to swallow eventually is that we can’t be the gatekeepers of Eurovision and campaign until every year has a result that all the fans think is reasonable and every year runs like clockwork with every song being preserved and performed just as we like it.
It does amuse me to notice that the audience in the Crystal Hall started clapping together at the exact same point during Loreen’s performance as the Globen audience did. I’m going to hazard a guess as to say that’s because they’re so used to seeing it on YouTube and they want to make sure its exactly the damn same. I saw people complaining about camera angles after the semi-final. I knew they were only saying that because it didn’t match what’s been burned into their memory.
Same goes for Kuula. People were complaining that Ott was over-singing it! But frankly, he took it to another level and even though I’d heard the song months in advance, that was when I finally “got it.” I highly doubt he would’ve come 6th if he hadn’t shown his voice off! ESC fans really don’t like it when something happens that isn’t “supposed” to happen, it seems. Language changes, stagings that don’t reflect the music video they all love, different hairdos and costumes, performers experimenting with the vocal… but all this stuff doesn’t matter to the public, or indeed the juries!
Anggun had a point when she said (I forget where exactly) she was unhappy that people were watching her rehearsals on YouTube and sending her worried messages. She felt the need to remind everyone why exactly they are called rehearsals. I really appreciated her honesty, seeing as performers are usually advised to stay diplomatic.
We have to remember that the fans are a tiny minority of the voters and most people will be seeing every country’s entry for the very first time on the night of the final. The public won’t know and won’t care about how the old version was better or about a slight change in choreography, they’ll vote based on what they see and hear that night.
Failing that, they’ll just vote because they want to support their home country or their cultural twin, which, yes, is not what you’re supposed to do, but it’s unstoppable.
I mean maybe you could have seperate entries from Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbaijan, but have Greece and Cyprus vote as one, and Turkey and Azerbaijan vote as one. That would make a lot of people in the west happy, but it’s not fair, and it wouldn’t be ethical to just tell those countries to take responsibility for their track record of voting and say you can vote independently again when you stop exhanging 12s every year. I would encourage all four countries to withdraw if they were put through that.
Max the issue with that method is that it would take ages for the votes to be read out. Changing the way that the votes are allocated does not need to be changed, there just needs to be honesty on behalf of the EBU announcing the televote and jury vote of each country.
@ Ben. I assume “rift in public perception” is quoting me.
I was speaking of the juries voting on a separate performance from that seen by the public, not the existence of juries themselves. I mistakenly called the jury rehearsal “jury final,” which might have been misleading.
The point about our recorded-version preferences vs. live appreciation is a good one. Presumably, juries would also be susceptible to that effect if we want them listening a month in advance. (But having made the connection, I’m not suggesting it’s an argument against pre-familiarisation any more than the fact that some jurors are more competent than others.)
The effect of audience reactions on jurors judging the same performance might be harder to dismiss.
@Max.
Your system means that every televote cancels itself.
Public:
Turkey = 70% = 1st, 1st=70 pts
Russia = 15% = 2nd, 2nd=15 pts
Jury (jury score, ignored):
Russia (141) = 1st = 70 pts
Turkey (140) = 2nd = 15 pts
Sum:
Russia = Turkey
Half of your vote goes where you choose, and you don’t know where the other half goes – usually something else.
That’s right. Besides, this way is more complicated.
So, but I still think that current voting system in the ESC needs some changes. Namely, I would like to improve a way by means of we determine draws during summing up points from televoting and jury. Currently, in the case of draw, country with the highest points form jury receives more points in combined results in 50%/50%. It’s not good in my opinion, because points from (for instance) diaspora voting can be enough to take place in the top 3 in final results, even if a given country hasn’t received any points in the jury voting. Therefore I recommend my way, how we can fairly determine draws in the points of televoting and jury So, as we know, every draw in official results in the ESC is determined on based of a number of notes, if still is tie-break we look at a number of 12 points, 10 points, 8 points and other. I think that EBU should be consistently and use the same way during summing up points in 50%/50%.
In conclusion, in the case of draw, we put emphasis on:
1) a number of notes
2) a number of 12 p., next 10 p., 8 p. …
3) finally (when 1) and 2) don’t help) a number points from televoting
This is good example (official Turkey voting in the Grand Final ESC 2009):
(1-st column from left – jury points.)
1. Norway 12 + 8 = 20 (12p.)
2. Azerbaiajn 7 + 6 = 13 (10p.)
3. Turkey 0 + 12 = 12 (8p.)
4. Iceland 8 + 4 = 12 (7p.)
5. France 10 + 2 = 12 (6p.)
6. Armenia 0 + 10 = 10 (5p.)
7. Bosnia 0 + 7 = 7 (4p.)
8. United Kingdom 4 + 3 = 7 (3p.)
9. Germany 6 + 0 = 6 (2p.)
10. Greece 0 + 5 = 5 (1p.)
And now my improving:
1. Norway 12 + 8 = 20 (12p.)
2. Azerbaijan 7 + 6 = 13 (10p.)
3. France 10 + 2 = 12 (8p.)
4. Iceland 8 + 4 = 12 (7p.)
5. Turkey 0 + 12 = 12 (6p.)
6. Armenia 0 + 10 = 10 (5p.)
7. United Kingdom 4 + 3 = 7 (4p.)
8. Bosnia 0 + 7 = 7 (3p.)
9. Germany 6 + 0 = 6 (2p.)
10. Greece 0 + 5 = 5 (1p.)
Can you see a difference ?
Apparently, there’s no such thing as a perfectly fair voting system (or any electoral system for that matter: ask Britain’s LibDems). The fact is that the current system works well for determining the winner, while lower places might not be quite so undisputed. Does it really matter? The point of ESC is determining one winner – the rest are basically also-runs.
I’ve just made a brief calculation with the result of Melodifestivalen 2012 (maybe not the best example, but it is the one where all the figures are avaiilable publicly). Obviously there would be no changes in 1st and 2nd places (Loreen and Danny) as they were run-away winners, but with different point allocation there would be substantial differences in other placings:
a) had they used the old system of translating televotes into points (132-110-88-etc) 3rd place would have gone to Topcats (they were 6th)
b) had they transformed both results (televote/all the juries together) into their usual 12-10-8-6-4-2-1 system and added them together – third would be Thorste Flinck (8th)
c) by using Max’ system 3rd place would go to David Lindgren (4th)
That’s the way it goes with simple mathematics. The only point is that the voting system must be as transparent as possible – that’s why I support Ewan’s original proposal.
Until we have transparency, any assumptions about perceived flaws in voting and how to correct them depend on subjective speculation anyway.
Juries were back because some stupid people complaining for nothing wanted them to.
No matter how “fair” it looks, they’ll never be fair because there bunch of idiots in those juries (former ESC contestants and people wanting ESC to be commercial/conventional/gay)
25% juries with televoting tie break should the max, and the system should look like this
It’s copy/paste time
Final:
75% televoting (10 to 1 point with no gaps for their top 10, to still have a top 3 that makes sense and giving low televoting points (that aren’t diaspora affected for the huge majority of them) the weight they deserve))
25% juries (4 then 3,5 then 3 then 2,5 etc to 0,5 for their top 8 (0,25 and 0,125 serve no purpose so they are discarded)
televoting tie break of course
Then merge them into the usual “12 to 1 points” with gaps.
Semi-final:
old wildcard system back with a novelty
1)televoting top 9 qualifies
2) the country that came last in jury voting can’t qualify unless they’re in the televoting top 5 or got at least one 12 point from one televoting. (Norway 2012 came last in semis but we can’t check that other rule obviously), meaning the 10th country in televoting qualifies
3) then we apply the wildcard system
I think this is a perfect neutral system that don’t benefit any country.
If televoting didn’t like the song, it’s usually musical kithchy trash, as seen once again this year (France/Malta/Moldova/Spain/Ukraine and many others), and if they liked it and it isn’t a diaspora country, they 100% deserved it (and even if it is, a diaspora country only gets a 35 points advantage overage the average “cultural/diaspora” friendly points (that is more or less 25 points for all the countries), and that diaspora bonus is greatly reduced even with 75% televoting the way I do it. (with no gaps before the merge)
If televoting makes a “mistake”, specially if they overrated diaspora countries (as if they ever made any mistake, the televoting top 10 is usually perfect) , there is still 25% juries to give others countries a boost of 3 or 4 ranks, but nothing more, because juries can also boost diaspora countries ironically
Lordi wouldn’t have won under 50/50, i’m sure of it
And anyway the televoting complains are usually from nationalistic people (that also are HODs and such), that want their country to do well no matter what c*** they send, and want the system in which they did better LOLOLOLOL. And since they don’t understand other countries culture, they just say “we didn’t deserve this result” . Stupid really.
Anyway since 50/50 was introduced, i don’t take any ESC result seriously (exept televoting when it’s released of course)
That ends the copy/paste
And I forgot (you can just merge this with my previous message) the most important thing , that is trivia but still would have given some interest to the dreadful contest that was 2011:
50% juries (or even 25%) just screw everything up to the point that, twice in a row (2011 and 2012), the voting could have been very interesting with full televoting, proving to people that didn’t believe it that a voting can be close even with 43 countries voting.
I’ll never approve juries after that, as I predicted it back in 2008, the voting don’t mean anything anymore, and it don’t even manage to be entertaining.
I think that your idea is a little complicated.
Great article and great points too.
But I think televoters can also appreciate a good song, even if it comes from a country with no neighbors. And as far as political voting goes, juries probably vote for political reasons more then public.
For example, there is no way Georgian jury will give any points to Russia even if many Georgian people would vote for Russia despite uneasy relationship between countries. In Baltic countries there is a big number of Russians (particularly in my homeland of Latvia) and many non-Russian people have no problem with Russians but many politicians have strong anti-Russian sentiment. So, Baltic juries are unlikely to give high points to Russia. Moldova also has some political problems with Russia because of Trasdniestr region and politically voting juries will jump on the chance to deprive Big Bear of a few points. Armenia and Azerbaijan hate each other, it’s people will not vote for each other and juries are even more likely not to give points to the enemy. Imagine Azerbaijani jurors giving Armenia points – they will be in deep trouble. With people it’s probably less so – before the collapse of USSR Armenia and Azerbaijan were good friends, they had close cultural and economic ties, maybe some people will remember the past times and vote for each other. But the juries will certainly vote according to current political situation.
That’s good point. It seems that current voting system is the best. We simply can’t create something better, but I agree with all introduced ways about improving jury voting.
Many people think 50/50 is complicated as well though.
And it works just fine (for the EBU at least).
My method is the exact thing (merging 2 set of votes into one, then make the “12 to 1” scoreboard, just with 25% juries and no gaps before the merge)
@ Zolan
Yeah, I can understand that people can find it a bit unfair that the juries vote on a different performance to the voting public, but let’s take a step back. It is absolutely not practical for the juries to vote at the same time as the public.
Imagine, a panel of people in 40-something countries having 15 minutes to make up their minds, give their individual points, have all the points tallied together and verified, faxed over to the EBU’s voting regulator, have those verified again, deliver them to the EBU, who then have to deliver them back to the individual broadcasters for presentation, who, thanks to this new algorithm to make the voting exciting, don’t even know when they’re going to be on air because they don’t have any jury points to build an algorithm on until just now!
The thought of it is actually quite hilarious!
Besides, the juries vote for the same performer, in the same dress, with the same song, the same sound levels, the same stage graphics and camera angles… that’s about as much as anyone can do. It should be the responsibility of the delegation and performers to make sure they are good both times.
@Ben.
Okay. I thought having semi-decided jurors might allow us to avoid separate voting events as a bonus, but I clearly underestimated how complex the whole procedure might be.
I’m not personally troubled by it, but I do think it can lead to baffling results for those who aren’t in the know. Although, that’s going to happen regardless.
You said Lordi wouldn’t win under 50/50 but as the Granny’s and Loreen have shown this year that if you get a landslide, in televtoe, juries cant really effect you.
Ok Lordi’s landslide looks less of a landslide now after Loreen and Rybak, but it was still a big 50+ gap and is the 3rd highest score in Eurovision to date, and was the highest at the time.
I believe they still would have won, but it would just be an ok win, as opposed to a massive win.
I’ve been very happy with the jury and tele-vote 50/50 approach up until this year when it became apparent that the jury voting is definitely questionable.
How can the juries place a professional singer, who sang well (albeit with an average number) last and a group of Russian grannies singing a joke entry, out of tune, 11th?
We all knew the grannies would do very well in the televote but for them to come 11th with juries beggars belief. Even last year’s Russian entry was better than it and the juries placed it 25th.
I don’t know whether it just happens to be the make up of the juries this year or whether they were just swept away like everyone else but it was the most bizarre result in the contest.
However, I would not advocate any more changes to the voting system. We’ll never get everyone happy.
Accept the will of the people, whatever it may be. There’s no point in having a jury in. The high votes still come in predictably as they did before, and whilst the impact of diaspora might of decreased to a certain extent, political and strategical thinking is possessing more and more power. Basically, the price for preventing (at least transparent) overperformances from Greece, Russia or Turkey is to spoil the table for the rest of the contestants. I do not think it is worth it. Another thing one better keep in mind that the ‘usual suspects’ have been continuously sending jury-unfriendly material since the implentation of the 50/50-system in 2009. With the help of an americanised, nicely sung entry (preferably a ballad) they would be likely to receive a jury boost in addition to their televoting advantage. The Ukraine and Serbia, previously reckoned among the big televote hitters, rigorously failed to qualify based on public scores in 2012 and 2011 respectively. They were put through with the help of the jury verdicts though.
After all the influence of diaspora and neighbourly voting does not seem as big as some make it out to be.
You claim the jury system is working but I beg to differ. People are happy about Western European countries taking good places – that’s it.
However, that’s a thing we also would learn if the EBU agreed to more transparency.
PS: Please excuse my mistakes. English is not my first language.
Not until this year Grand Final did people know that current system is optional methode of voting as far as fair intake either jury or televoting points of the final results, efficient decreasing of diaspora influence on the results in Western European countries that are dominated by loads of Ormian and Turkish national minorities and preventing the mark of the ESC from succeeding in achieving high positions kitsh songs from Russian grannies etc. are concerned.