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Eurovision Insight Podcast: Our Final Daily News From Tel Aviv, Sunday 19th May Written by on May 19, 2019 | 9 Comments

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That was the contest that was. The Eurovision Song Contest for 2019 draws to a close, but before we move on, let’s review the Grand Final in our final daily podcast from Tel Aviv.

Eurovision Insight Podcast: Our Final Daily News From Tel Aviv, Sunday 19th May

Reviewing the Grand Final of Eurovision 2019, examining the voting sequence, thoughts on the votes, and our highlights of the show.

With Ewan Spence, John Paul Lucas, Matt Baker, and Ade Bradley.

The summer is here, but our Eurovision insights will continue. Stay up to date with all the Eurovision discussions by listening to the ESC Insight podcasts. You’ll find the show in iTunesGoogle Podcasts, and SpotifyA direct RSS feed is  available. We also have a regular email newsletter which you can sign up to here.

About The Author: Ewan Spence

British Academy (BAFTA) nominated broadcaster and writer Ewan Spence is the voice behind The Unofficial Eurovision Song Contest Podcast and one of the driving forces behind ESC Insight. Having had an online presence since 1994, he is a noted commentator around the intersection of the media, internet, technology, mobility and how it affects us all. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, his work has appeared on the BBC, The Stage, STV, and The Times. You can follow Ewan on Twitter (@ewan) and Facebook (facebook.com/ewanspence).

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9 responses to “Eurovision Insight Podcast: Our Final Daily News From Tel Aviv, Sunday 19th May”

  1. Eurojock says:

    Thanks to all at Esc Insight for your coverage throughout the Eurovision season.

  2. Shai says:

    The Netherlands wasn’t the runaway winner everyone thought it would be. At the end the song won and it is a deserved winner.

    4 hours was too long. For next year’s organisers,please cut the interval act, give less time for televoting and finish the whole thing in 3.5 hours.

    Madonna was simply waste of time and a waste of money. She sung out of tune, which was embarrassing(and even worse than some of the contestants) and her action with the costume of her dancers, is just sticking a middle finger to her hosts.

    John Lundvik’s face when the telvoting results was coming in, was TV gold moment. However it is exactly what Ben Robertson was writing about a few weeks ago, here on the site. The transfer from joy to surprise and disappointment couldn’t be masked.On the other hand, if we had the previous system, the last seconds of the broadcast would have been less exiting.
    And yes, it was a bit confusing, with this system, to see clearly who won the televoters.

    Iceland – EBU should fine RUV heavily as they are responsible for the song and singer. RUV should have know that their band will try to make some provocation. They didn’t and knowing how the EBU works, they will issue a warning, which as good as doing nothing.

    If Israel can win, the UK can also win. All they need is to come with a good song that attract both juries and televoters. That’s what the Dutch did this year. The UK have enough talent to come with a good talent.

    On a personal note – as an Israeli lives in The Netherlands the last 2 years were a rollercoaster of emotions. That both my countries have won, one after another is a real dream come true, one I have never dared to dream to ever happens

  3. Hans says:

    Thank you Ewan and Sam and the entire team for making this whole week such a joy. And please allow me to heap a bunch of praise upon this final on site podcast, to me the most insightful wrap up ever. I’m happy to be a little part of this journey with y’all with what this old age pensioner can afford. I know it’s just a token but I truly appreciate all the hard work. And now on to, what Hilversum? Leeuwarden? Danke vel!

  4. Steven says:

    Thank you very much for all your coverage – the podcasts and articles have been excellent, and I look forward to seeing the team go over the results in more depth (once you’ve all recovered and had a nice relaxing break!)

    Now the more important question: When can we buy the new theme song on itunes? 🙂

  5. Mark says:

    I enjoyed the show and all the Eurovision Insight coverage, but the televote reveal still stinks. We were told at length that Sweden needed 253 to win, when basic arithmetic had already confirmed that not enough points were available for such a score. So the otherwise excellent hosts were therefore pretending that something impossible might happen. That’s TV fakery.

  6. Cris Lehmann says:

    Mark – you are totally correct but it did make it more exciting. Only someone with a calculator/spreadsheet would have known for sure. The fact you could still bet on Holland at 1/10 on Betfair tells you that there was still doubt. I should have taken that price given, as you say, it was already known but I didn’t know for definite so held off.

    I re-watched the voting sequence and there was a small but audible cheer after Holland’s points were announced so certainly there were a few in the room at that point who knew Holland were already the winners.

  7. Mark Dowd says:

    excellent coverage these last weeks. Thank you! But one query Ewan. You have stated on more than one occasion that the ESC organizers do not have access to the semifinal scores when arranging the running order. What is your chapter and verse source for that? Many other ESC commentators state quite the opposite. Is it merely luck and coincidence that songs which end up in the top two in their semi and draw 1st half always get allotted 9 to 13? (Conchita, Mans, Dami Im , Salvador, Duncan etc)

  8. Mark says:

    Thank you Chris Lehmann. You in turn are perfectly right, NED v SWE was exciting. But we didn’t need calculators or spreadsheets to know that it was still highly unlikely that Sweden would get a 12-fold increase on their televote score from last year. In any case, there will always be someone who really has done the maths and who will yell Spartacus. We need a system which will make that impossible. Otherwise, future Lawrences and Lundviks will already know their fate by the time they get onto the split screen.

  9. Ben Pitchers says:

    Thanks for all the great coverage. The show went well after all the earlier issues. When I saw Arcade in the semi-final I thought that the orb light was going to smash into the piano! I’m glad we all got to see what the Dutch delegation had actually envisaged.

    I thought the new way of presenting the votes was exciting and nail-biting, but not necessarily more so than the previous sequences in 2016-2018. The suspense comes from having to wait until all the votes are revealed to see who has won. I agree that there needs to be more thought as to who the camera goes to during the televote reveal. If they knew Malta had a low televote score, I see no reason for the audience to see Michela receiving that news on camera. The same with Lake Malawi. I think I prefer the previous system where every country who came top 10 in the televote got to be on camera and had their moment in the sun, especially when countries who didn’t receive a top mark from any jury got to enjoy some success.

    The new reveal system has one benefit for the EBU as I can see it: unless you’re really paying attention it’s hard to notice if the winning country won the televote or not. I didn’t realise Norway had won it until I saw the split results; I just knew they did really well. It allowed you to just concentrate on who the winner was and that they had the most points.

    The voting window has been incredibly long the last few years – I see no reason for it to need to be open for more than 15 minutes. When the EBU allowed people to vote from time the first song was performed in 2010 & 2011, they saw that most people waited until after all the songs were performed to vote. I’m sure most viewers who vote do so as soon as they can jot down the numbers from the first recap.

    I’m a Madonna fan but thought she was an unnecessary addition to the show. Her singing compared badly to all the competing entries (who were all on very good form as far as I could tell) but I enjoyed the epic feel to her presentation. We all had to wait too long for the voting sequences. I’d have preferred to have the excellent switch song and Netta to have been the focus of the interval acts.

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