The Principality Returns
One of the many moments in Liverpool was the on-screen confirmation that Luxembourg would return to the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time since 1993’s twentieth place with ‘Donne-moi une chance.’ It offered the community a sense of momentum, and it was a nice bit of news to open the show and help Eurovision feel ‘alive’ in a way that it had never felt before in the 21st century.
Can the Song Contest pull the same trick again? Monaco has a new public service broadcaster in the shape of TVMonaco. This broadcaster is a member of Monaco Media Diffusion and, therefore, a member of the EBU, which means it’s eligible to enter the Song Contest. Monaco could have pushed for this in 2024 but decided to, understandably, focus on setting up the new station.
But 2025? That’s a possibility. If you wanted to be cautious, you’d wait to see the result Luxembourg can earn as a small and returning country. But if you’re going to take the gamble and get a bit more publicity, why not sign up now and have it announced to the world during the Grand Final?
It’s All About The App
Let’s remember this is a Swedish-hosted Song Contest, and here in the land of snow and schlager, we love a good tinkering with the format. Modern Eurovision’s voting presentation, backing vocals on tape, and producer-led running order are some of the many Swedish changes that have stuck.
We’d expect any change to be Melfest-inspired, so something inspired by Melodifestivalen will be finally implemented at Eurovision.
I’m pretty sure it’s too late in the day to announce that we will have eight people on stage, and I’m pretty sure the Reference Group is still vetoing the sensible Swedish wish to move the start time one hour earlier. Plus, lets have faith in the EBU that if they say in March that the voting system and presentation remain the same for May, then that is unchanged.
But they do say it’s a big change. I think that also rules out some dystopian Swedish wishes, such as a fully producer-led running order, which is exactly the kind of show edit that would slip through without a press release building up any suspense. Instead, I think it will be a tweak originating from Sweden’s biggest success story of modern Melodifestivalen… The Melfest app claims to have world-record levels of second-screen engagement and succeeds in getting over one million Swedes voting in the final, around one in four of the total audience.
Let’s push every single public vote through the Eurovision app. No other phone lines, no texts, just the downloadable app.
The votes will still be from the public, so the system and presentation will remain the same as the EBU have publicly stated, but how they will be collected might be radically different.
Making Space For Junior Eurovision
Junior Eurovision has always played a part in the week of the Eurovision Song Contest, with a video announcement of the host city generally accepted as part of one of the Adult show’s interval acts. Coult the EBU and SVT go one step further this year by inviting the reigning Junior Eurovision champion (in this case, France’s Zoé Clauzure) to perform their winning song (‘Cœur’) live on the main Eurovision stage.
This one of the biggest opportunities Junior Eurovision misses out on is its links back to the main competition. Winning a competition consisting of your young peers across Europe is a huge achievement. Attaching that victory to the opportunity to perform as an interval act at the Song Contest in May means more eyeballs in more countries and massive potential for career impact.
This would also offer a tangible career-focused prize for each year’s Junior Eurovision. Once the show’s winner was confirmed each winter, they would be one of the first confirmed performing acts and songs for the main contest the following May.
A Second Chance To Sing
The change many will hope for is allowing bags into the arena.
In lieu of our trusted but now banned fanny pack, best start shopping for angler’s vests online. A tip to entrepreneurial manufacturers—there’s a real market gap here because they don’t seem to come in any colour but blah blah beige. We’d pay good money to have one in a silver sequin!
But to get more realistic…. I think the EBU might be evaluating the success of the televote-only policy in the Semi Finals. Yes, it’s good to listen to what the people want, but sometimes, they miss something esoteric, beautiful, and strange—something that deserves a second chance at getting a place in the Grand Final.
That’s why SVT—inspired by Melfest—will bring an Andra Chansen element to the Eurovision Song Contest. At the beginning of Saturday’s show, Martin Osterdahl will announce two potential contestants from each Semi Finals that can be added as a wildcard act to the final. Viewers will vote for their favourite act during the show’s first half. Voting closes halfway through the show (with a lovely little ‘stop voting now’ sequence to confuse the drunk people at parties), and the Andra Chansen is announced as a surprise act to go on as the final song in the running order.
Will it be a banger or a ballad? Only Österdahl knows!
Not only does the Andra Chansen give people a storyline with a payoff in the middle of what can feel like a very long night, it also rakes in more money through an extra round of voting; a win-win all around. Now, I know the rules-conscious among you will have noted that Rest of World voting opens nearly a day before the Grand Final starts. Why not announce the Andra Chansen earlier, after Thursday’s live semifinal? Simple. While diehard Eurofans tune in to ensure we’re not going to miss the peals of Te Deum, that’s not the case among the casual Saturday night viewers. But by having a moment of tension—a call to action—as soon as the show starts, instead of a slightly schmaltzy postcard showcasing the host city, viewers will be hooked from the get-go—and that’s better for the show and its ratings!
Let Everyone Sing How They Want To Sing
The first Eurovision Song Contest had an orchestra, and because of that, the performances on stage mostly matched those of the contemporary music scene. Fast-forward to 2023, and you realise that music has moved on; there’s not an orchestra in sight, and the music is pre-recorded, yet a pure human voice is still amplified into the hall across Europe and beyond.
And that’s a problem for me, because modern music can add so much to a performer’s voice, from vocal synthesis and vocoders, to harmonizers and talk boxes. Yet many of these fall afoul of the Song Contest rules that restrict vocal “imitations” that replace or assist a live and original voice from the stage.
How much of a difference can this make? To take one recent example, Denmark’s Reiley leans into an electronic style around his voice; this worked wonderfully in the studio versions of ‘Breaking My Heart’, but when it took to the stage in Liverpool, the rules stripped away the chorus’s unique sounds.
I’d love to see the rule on vocal processing be relaxed and allow the modern pop sound to be heard at the Song Contest. We don’t limit performers to working with an orchestra any more, so why force them to abandon the modern music tools that have made their careers?
Curiously, there’s a lot of electronic-tinged music in competition this year. I wonder if they know something we don’t.
Ahead of the announcement, what do you think and what do you hope will be the big change? Are they the same? And do you think any change would be welcomed? Let us know in the comments.
The EBU’s statement talks about a rule change for Malmö 2024. I read it as someting which will have a direct impact on the contest.
A return of Monaco will have an impact on 2025,but doesn’t fall under a rule change.
Allowing the winner of JESC sings in the final, is more a format change than a rule change.
Allowing singers sing as they want, is a change of rule that should have been anounced months ago. To anounce it so close to the contest, is way too late.
Andrea Chansen – 2nd time you bring this idea up. I still don’t think it is a good idea. With this idea you shift the interest of the audience from the participants of the final to someone who has not yet got to the final. You also make it extra complicated to the audience in regards to the voting.
App voting – I have no idea what is the difference between Eurovision and MF app, in regards to the voting. So have no idea what this means.
If there is an extra rule change, I think it will be in the voting.
1 change to consider is the jurries don’t have to rank all songs.
Another change I can think of, is that jurries will award 9 and/or 11 points. Which mean we will have 11 or 12 countries receiving points from the jurries and there will be more points allocated in general.
All great suggestions above, but I’m convinced that it will be something which will result in the planned cut to the running time of the final. Fewer qualifiers is the obvious way to do that.
As I recall, the scriptwriter has said that the running time cut i in the order of five minutes. Even if it was longer, I don’t think the EBU would want to cut the number of songs – the value, eespcially for smaller broadcasters, is getting to Saturday night and the larger viewing figures when they qualify. THe balance point of 26 feels about right to me for entertainment purposes (comeptitively is another matter).
I hope they will announce that the big5 will have to qualify just like everyone else
I am not a fan of changing the rules mid competition…and technically we are in mid competition as countries already chose their entries….this makes it unfair not knowing the rules of the game once you’ve already started playing the game…some countries’ national finals try to mirror Eurovision in terms of vocals, voting procedures etc…to basically tell countries they can use auto-tune after countries didn’t have auto-tune at their national selections and folks might’ve been eliminated due to bad singing is not a fair approach…the delegations should be able to vote on this of this nature before a Eurovision season starts in September…not up to the producers a couple weeks before the start of rehearsals. If you want to turn Eurovision of a video contest like OGAE then why bother have artists be on stage…just send a video and let them “sing how they want to sing” — via a well-produced, well-edited, highly-controlled music video instead of having to dance, perform and sing live on stage