200 Brave Souls: In Depth Analysis Of The 2015 Eurovision Juries Written by Ben Robertson on May 1, 2015 | 9 Comments

Exactly one year ago today, the names of 5 people from each of the participating countries in the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 were announced. These were the expert juries, who were responsible for making up 50% of the total vote from each country. Today, the European Broadcasting Union revealed the names of 200 people from 40 countries who will have the same task for the competition in Vienna. In this article Ben Robertson is going to plough through the names revealed by each country looking out for common trends with our jury compositions and some of the interesting or well known faces that will be casting their scores on the night. 

For those who would like the full data, the EBU have released their own summary on their own website today as well with a link to each member available in this pdf.

The Famous Faces From The Contest

The EBU have spotted that there are in total 31 members signed up for each jury who have been a lead artist on the Eurovision stage. Marie Myriam, the victor for France in 1977, is the only winner, however more modern names of note include Aram Mp3, Dina Garipova and Margaret Berger.

Two names of particular interest are those of Cleo and Donatan, the lead singer and producer, respectively, of ‘Slavic Girls‘ which was last year’s Polish entry. The Polish song was well publicised for doing poorly with the juries compared to the televoting, so it will be particularly interesting to see how Cleo and Donatan respond to this in the voting themselves.

Other famous names include Bruno Berberes, who was the Head of the French Delegation for ten years and has recently been awarding the points for France in Melodifestivalen. You can see him here in this year’s edition of the Swedish final awarding 12 points to ‘Heroes’.

Balance Across The Jury

Last year our article reviewing the 2014 juries was somewhat critical to the EBU definition of balance. The juries should, according to the rules of the Song Contest, be able to ‘ensure sufficient representativeness in terms of gender, age and background.’ Last year in terms there were examples of gender mis-balance on the five person juries, as well as groups of completely contrasting age demographics.

In terms of the gender balance this has been an improvement from last year. In 2014 there were 79 females and 106 males on the different juries, however this was split so that 30 of the 37 juries was majority female and 2 juries were announced on May 1st with a 80-20 split of males to females.

This year our confirmed full numbers are 90 females and 109 males (Albania is, for whatever reason, missing a jury member at the moment, although they do have a back-up member in place…), which moves us closer towards a gender balance. However there are still outliers to this and not every five member jury is a 3-2 split. Azerbaijan this year has four females and one male member, with Germany, Malta and the Czech Republic featuring juries of just one solitary female voice surrounded by four men.

In terms of the age range of each jury, it does seem that we have a better mix than last year as well. Our average jury age this year is 40, the same as last year. However each jury seems to be more balanced around this average with only one country, Romania, having a jury lacking people below the age of 40 (although 40-year-old Ovi is on the jury, and maybe a miracle will make him appear more youthful). Romania’s jury is the eldest, with an average age of 52.6 years, and Latvia the youngest at 32.2 years.

Spain’s jury offers some point for consideration as the age of jurors offer a tiny range, with 32-year-old Ruth Lorenzo the youngest and chairperson Jacobo Calderón the eldest at 41 years old. Is a nine-year range of jury ages sufficient for offering the balance needed? Further critique of Spain’s choices, with four of the five being previous artists in the Eurovision Song Contest during the 21st Century, may also fail to give a true balance of backgrounds that the EBU require.

Not Meeting The Criteria

For some of the people on the juries, we would potentially question if they are qualified to be a part of the juries. The EBU’s rules document for the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest is quite strict about the professional background that members need to have. ‘Members must fall into the following categories: radio DJ, artist, composer, author of lyrics or music producer.’ However there are numerous examples throughout of people not meeting these criteria.

We would question for example if Lisa Tsangaridou, the Cypriot jury member, would fit into the mix with her background as the organiser of a dance studio in Nicosia. Similarly the biography for 21-year-old student Nicole Tabone says that she is a ‘young student and a TV presenter. She was a key person in the organisation of the JESC 2014 in Malta,’ which frankly doesn’t give enough suggestion of her work in the music industry. Further digging here tells us being the ‘key person’ amounts to her being the Production Secretary for the Malta competition, being responsible for the co-ordination of volunteers.

Being strict as well it seems unfair to include Barbara Mosconi from Italy in the jury mix. She is a music journalist who has covered San Remo many times and previously been on the jury of music competitions, but sadly she has not evidenced her background within the categories that the EBU have strictly specified in their rules document.

We did love Malta’s hosting of Junior Eurovision, but is the person in charge of co-ordinating the volunteers the right person to cast 10% of their Eurovision points?

We would also raise the concerns about possible conflicts of interest. The Eurovision rules require jury members to not be ‘connected in any way with any of the participating songs entered and/or artists performing in the ESC in such a way that they cannot vote in complete independence and impartiality.’ Last year at this time we raised this as a potential issue for members with a record label background, as they may favour songs from their own label in the voting. We identified three people with record label backgrounds last year, Marcus van Lier from Switzerland (Warner Music), Patrick Hughes from Ireland (Sony) and Dietmar Lienbacher from Austria (Sony). Here is how they voted last year for their respective acts.

Warner Music acts last year: Sanna Nielsen, Molly Smitten-Downes, Twin-Twin

Sony Music acts last year: Conchita Wurst, Softengine

Marcus van Lier’s votes in the Eurovision Grand Final for Warner Music acts: Sweden (1st), UK (2nd), France (3rd)

Patrick Hughes’ votes in the Eurovision Grand Final for Sony Music acts: Austria (3rd), Finland (22nd)

Dietmar Lienbacher’s votes in the Eurovision Grand Final for Sony Music acts: Finland (9th)

The correlation from Marcus van Lier’s votes show a perfect correlation to what we would expect from his professional background, one which is not evident from the members from Sony Music. The potential for any record label executive to hijack their voting to exert their professional bias means that we argue they can not be a sufficiently independent person to be on a Eurovision Song Contest jury.

Did Sanna Nielsen get one of her top scores last year on the back of somebody else’s professional bias?

This year on the jury we have a few other names that could need to be held to extra accountability in this regard. Rafaela Spitzli is the Promotion Manager for Universal Switzerland, the label that Albanian singer Elhaida Dani is signed onto. Finland has a backup jury member called Lasse Kurki who works for Warner as their A&R manager, with Warner having Sweden’s Måns Zelmerlöw on their books.  The appearance of Italian juror Valerio Paolini is also interesting, as through running lyrics-database website MusicXmatch he has organised deals with the likes of Sony, Warner and Universal in the past.

Finally we highlight the two members of the German jury which offer food for thought. Kris Hünecke and Johannes Strate are members of the band Revolverheld. In 2010 they released the hit song ‘Halt Dich An Mir Fest’ reaching number eight in the German charts, but interestingly featured the vocals of Czech singer Marta Jandová. Will their collaboration impact on their ability to be impartial?

We will of course report on their results in full after the Contest to see if any correlations align from their professional backgrounds or not.

The Possibility Of Politics

Following on from the discussions at the Eurovision Conference, where Dr Paul Jordan told us about the relations Eurovision has had and will continue to have with the political movements of the time, it will be interesting to see if any features of this can be seen in contest scoring.

Alcazar used their chance to award the votes for Sweden in 2014 as a chance to highlight ‘human rights’ in a message that was only loosely veiled away from some of Europe’s Eastern-most countries. With Lina Hedlund from the group on the jury this year will the voting record all be biased away from those of a poor human rights record?

After last year’s Azeri and Armenian juries put each other in last place it will be interesting to observe if that trend continues. However that trend may be extended beyond their borders this year. Both Cyprus and Greece feature jury members who are half-Armenian in their mix, and especially given the politically sensitive nature of Armenian entry ‘Face The Shadow‘ how these members vote impartially on the Song Contest shall be looked at very closely.

It’s also worth highlighting Australian jury member Jake Stone and the comments reported in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Stone believes it’s his role to reward artists who take a “different and quirky” approach.  He will be asking: “What is their social relevance? What barriers has someone had to push through to get that far? “I can’t help but listen to the quality of the song, but there’s also the performance itself. Is it socially meaningful?

We’re read the judging criteria supplied by the EBU (“Each jury member is asked to evaluate the composition, the performance, the overall act and the song’s hit potential”) and short of really twisting ‘overall’ there’s no indication that social impact or political relevance should be used to judge an act.

The Pressure Now Lies On Their Shoulders

Last year’s jury information went above and beyond the expectations of many Eurovision commentators. In the build-up to the Song Contest having access to the list of members provided the possibility for scrutiny on an individual level, and with some jury submissions the EBU did step in and request changes to their composition. To this regard the EBU have already made some alterations to the list since it was published earlier today, but we have identified further possible members who do not meet the strict requirements set out in the Song Contest rules. However we believe that the EBU do have further to go to improve the jury system, and we gave some of those suggestions in the conclusions to our Voting Insight series last summer.

However it was after the Contest that the real news lay, as almost immediately after the Eurovision Grand Final we were given access to every jury members vote, from first place to last place. In the EuroClub After Party many of us were flicking between dancing on the floor to running back and dissecting the drama that had unfolded from the jury votes of each country.

This over-indulgence of data was not missed by the bigger media either, and national press reported on those songs that completely split jury and televote opinion, resulting in zero points. Jury members gave quotes to express their opinion and, in relation to the UK jury completely destroying the chances of Poland’s entry last year, the rhetoric used was mightily defensive.

The votes of these people may not fully determine who wins the Eurovision Song Contest this year, but they certainly have the power to stop individual songs from doing so. Their results will be held up bleary-eyed on Sunday morning for cross-examination for all the media to see and analyse. Our jury members now know the kind of pressure they will be under, and the level of quite personal scrutiny that their votes will be under. In that respect it is pleasing that many big names from the musical world and Eurovision bubble have happily stepped into being a jury member this year, not damaged by the negative PR backlash that exploded post-Copenhagen last year.

Our expectation of the impact of vote revealing is that jury members may think twice before awarding scores that could damage their personal reputation, and would be more likely to vote following the expected trends of the Song Contest. Only time will tell of course, but after last year’s trial run the importance of the jury vote is now bigger than ever and puts a lot of weight on their individual opinions.