With the Balkan Bloodbath from Tuesday continuing in the second semi-final, and the first contest with none of the Former Yugoslav countries since the break-up, the decision on this year’s winner will rest on the destination of the douze points from the Balkan countries.
There’s no clear indication looking at historical voting trends, with some countries favouring former Soviet states, some favouring the Empire (UK, Malta, Ireland), and others tending towards Greece. Many of the countries also pick up Italian television and Sanremo, with all that this implies.
With the Nordics, Caucuses, and ex-Soviet states all qualifying, along with the old guard in the west of Europe, there’s a huge Eurovision sized hole in the middle of Europe. That’s going to be something that many broadcasters, and the EBU, are going to have to look at in the near future.
The full list of qualifiers are:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Malta, Norway, and Romania.
The seven non-qualifiers are:
Albania, Bulgaria, Israel, Latvia, Macedonia, San Marino, and Switzerland.
With the new running order rules, the qualifiers draw out the first half or the second half of the running order, with SVT to recommend a running order to the EBU after the second semi-final. Here are the results of the position draw:
First Half: Finland, Malta, Armenia.
Second Half: Azerbaijan, Iceland, Georgia, Greece, Norway, Romania, Hungary.
That’s part of the game.Sometime you’re up and sometime you’re down.
If anything, it is good for the contest, that you can qualify, even if you don’t belong to a block(The Netherlands,Belgium), or not qualifying even if you do belong to a block(the whole ex-Yugoslvia).
It will take some time, but eventually it will happen when the big hitters(100% qualification record),will fail to qualify at some point
I don’t think the fact of the Balkan blackout means that the EBU has to ‘look at’ anything. Surely it’s good for the contest that we can see both the Netherlands and Belgium qualifying, but no counties from a block that has in recent years benefitted from a lot of mutual support.
The big gap in the middle of the map is not new. Switzerland, Austria, San Marino and Slovenia have always struggled, as did Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic when they were still I’m the game. This is the problem that needs to be addressed, not the Balkan issue. But it can only be addressed by local broadcasters upping their game. The fact is that these countries just didn’t send good enough songs most of the time.
The EBU needs to persuade them all to stay in (or come back) but also to make more of an effort. If the Neherlands can make it, anyone can.
The million dollar question is, with the Balkans who is on very good eurovision terms with any of them. As far as voting goes????
The only thing EBU need to look at is why they let Christer try and fix the running order in favour of the act containing both his boyfriend and his favourite Swedish song writer.
I think it’s a good sign that none of them are through – not because I have anything against those songs or countries, but because it shows that they have now matured enough as participating countries to vote for the songs they like, not the ones near them. Maybe one day the eastern block will do the same…
It’s good in the sense that it helps to dispell the myth that certain countries will always qualify based on neighbour voting and not on the quality of their songs.