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There’s lots to look back on, and over the summer months, we’ll be sure to do that. But for now, here are our highlights from the Grand Final, the week in Malmö, and the 2024 season as we bring the curtain down.
Eurovision Insight Podcast: Our Final News From Malmö, Sunday 12th May
Ewan Spence, Fin Ross Russell, and Dude Points are joined by Samantha Ross and Marcus Björkander to take a quick look back at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest before we all leave Malmö.
Stay up to date with all the Eurovision discussions through the summer by listening to the ESC Insight podcasts. You’ll find the show in iTunes, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. A direct RSS feed is available. We also have a regular email newsletter which you can sign up to here.
Great Grand Final this year. The standard of performances was consistently high. Thanks as ever to Ewan and the team for your coverage.
Thank you for the super coverage, it’s always sad to to hear the sad guitars. And if the EBU are going to let elephants in their room, they need to be much better at dealing with the resultant dung.
Dear Ewan and team,
It took me a while to sort out my thoughts, regarding this year’s contest and coverage. The result is this long comment.
Warning: The word Israel is featured quite a lot.
Coverage:
If I have to describe ESC Insight coverage for the 2024 contest, 1 word comes to my mind and that is “Incomplete”. If you have 37 countries in the contest and you only cover 36 of them, than your cover is incomplete in all aspects and it really doesn’t matter what your reasons were.
What I also didn’t like is the way that this was communicated to me as a reader. I may be wrong, but as far as I can remember, Ewan has never informed, on these pages or in any of the podcasts, that he is not going to cover Israel this year. It seems that this has been done to make sure that this goes somehow unnoticed. Only this didn’t go as planned, because I wouldn’t let it go quietly and unnoticed. If Ewan has informed about this non-coverage, then I missed it and by this my apologies.
ESC Insight could do what your friends at OnEurope.co.uk did. I don’t think they liked Israel’s participation much, however they informed their readers they are going to cover Israel anyway, because Israel is a participating country and , in the spirit of Eurovision, they decided to cover Israel. Their coverage of Israel was fair an honest. In that sense they were a beacon of light.
Staging:
The times I heard Ewan talk about staging possibilities are countless. Every year there is at least 1 song where Ewan talks about staging possibilities, based on the official video. The other option is a video where Ewan can’t make his mind about the staging possibilities, because the video is just too confusing.
Guess what: The official video for Israel gives you hints for a possible staging and when you look at the performance and compare that to the video, you can see the elements from the video that got into the performance.
The circle headlights in the video became the circle where the performance is framed, the modern dancing, the sun showing toward the end. They even got the effect of the swirling wind to be shown on the LED screen behind Eden and the dancer and on the floor.
Again, an incomplete coverage.
Booing:
The last time we heard booing was in 2014 and 2015 and the booing was aimed at the representative of Russia. I can’t remember if the booing was heard while the performance was going on or just when Russia was receiving points. I also don’t remember if I ever said anything about the booing. If I said nothing or if I said something to support the booing, I was wrong. I know this now.
Booing an artist is disgusting and disrespectful. No artist, no matter where he/she/they come from, deserves to be booed.
The reports about the booing Israel can be divided into 2 groups. Not reporting about the booing or mentioning the booing with the addition that the anti-booing technology the EBU uses, does not work. In some sites , some of the users were saying that Eden Golan deserved the booing, just because she is from Israel.
No one and I mean no one thought to condemn the booing. The silence was deafening.
Condemning the booing would be human and kind gesture. It will place the one who condemned the booing on a higher lever than the mob which dominates the tone in the Eurovision “community”.
If ESC Insight would have condemned the booing it would be in line with Ewan own mantra: “Be kind to each other”. Unfortunately, this manta was thrown out of the window, for this year. And Ewan, I am sorry, but I just can’t take you saying this mantra seriously anymore. Your action just didn’t match your words.
And for all of you out there, who think the booing was justified, here is a question: How will you react if the booing will be aimed at your own country?
And don’t say it will never happen. Yesterday it was Russia, today it was Israel. Who will be the next country whose head will be placed under the guillotine?
The booing had the opposite effect they wanted to achieve. There are many reasons for Israel televote success, this year. Here I give you 1 of many plausible explanations: The casual viewer turns on Saturday, hears the booing and gets intrigued, hears the song and actually pays attention to the song, he/she/they may like the song or not but he/she/they are still intrigued. He/she/they than also see that the singer in question keep singing regardless of the booing and at that moment Eden get the casual viewer’s admiration and the casual viewer decide to pick up the phone and vote for her. A negative feeling turned into a positive feeling, turned into a vote for the Israel. A sympathy vote for the singer, not for the country.
By this I want to thank all of those who booed. Your action had contribute to the high televote score for Israel. Not really what you wanted to achieve.
The booing lead me to the disrespect some of the delegations showed. The complaints about disrespectful behavior are coming from all sides. Some of the disrespect towards Israel was visible during the Semi-qualifiers press conference.
The basics of respect are very simple. You earn respect by giving someone else respect and you treat other people the way you wish to be treated. But saying that you cried when you heard Israel has qualified is disrespectful. You could say this in a different and respectful way. And blaming Israel(in the trend of blaming Israel for everything) for your bad result is disrespectful.
Results:
I have no problems with the Swiss win. It was a good song, performed and sung well.
Would I like Israel to win? sure. Even very much However, if I am honest, I will admit that an Israeli win would not be a good thing for the contest.
The reason I wanted Israel to win was this: An Israeli win would be a revenge and a big middle finger to all those sites and blogs who ignored Israel this season. An Israeli win would mean that those sites will have to mention that Israel has won the 68th Eurovision contest and they will have to decide whether they cover the preparations for the next contest in Israel and doing this for a whole year. Ignoring Israel wouldn’t be a possibility, because if they do that, they can close the shop and go home.
I didn’t like myself having these unkind and vicious thoughts. Especially when one of the sites was this site, a site I quite like and respect.
5th place and a huge televote score is a small victory under hostile circumstances.
What left is the amusement I felt toward the panic that was very much felt, all across the board, for an Israeli win. Hence Ben Robertson’s article, which was different in tone than his previous articles on the day the final. Hence the euforic feeling in the last podcast from Malmö. Not just because Nemo won, but because Israel didn’t win and the danger has been avoided. That euforic feeling was felt up to the North Pole and probably contributed to the ice melting there.
I can talk about the results for ages but here some things for thoughts:
When it comes for judging Switzerland the jurries did their job. I can’t say the same about how they judged Israel. I don’t think they applied the criteria set to them for Israel. There is a sense that the jurries downgraded Israel, just to avoid any backslash. Cornald Maas, the Dutch commentator, said during the jurries voting, that the jurries score for Israel was too low because the song was good and strong.
There were some surprises in the jurries vote- 8 unexpected points from Norway to Israel and discovering that in the Irish jurry, one of the jurries placed Israel on number 5. There were other jurries where Israel were placed in the top 10, even if these jurries didn’t give any point to Israel. Low and behold, some jurries actually judged the song.
Croatia winning semi 1 and The Netherlands 2nd place in semi 2, suggest they were both a televote magnet. I suspect that if they both were in the final, they would split the votes between they. In this case we might have a different top 5. Unfortunately we will never know.
A question to the Norwegian HoD: Do you still think changing the balance between televote and jurries is a good idea? We might have a different top 5 or even a different winner if your idea was implemented this year.
Future:
Eurovision is navigating through stormy weather ,accompanied with high waves. Will it survive this and reach a safe haven? If Eurovision is as strong as we think it is, it should be able to do that. To do this there is a need for the EBU and the broadcasters to work together for a solution where everyone can live with. Blaming each other, would not help anyone. If Eurovision is not as strong as we think it is, maybe it’s Eurovision “All Good Things Come to an End”.
On personal note: This season left me with a bitter taste. ESC Insight decision not to cover Israel and the disqualification of the Dutch contestant made the taste even more bitter and therefore was hard to swallow.
I watched the Grand Final with mixed feelings.
There were times during this season, when I didn’t know if my comments on ESC Insight would be left as they are. Luckily, and credit when credit due, my comments remained unchanged. On 1 occasion Ewan merged 2 comments to 1 comment, but the content of the comment remained unchanged. I think I gave Ewan some hard time with my comments. I won’t be surprised if he hoped that other people will comment quickly, so my comment won’t be visible in the “recent comments”section.
As I said above, it wasn’t all joy and happy season for me. I lost the joy for Eurovision, which means I am taking a step back.
I may or may not visit this site. I may or may not leave comments. Not sure what I will do and how long it will take until I am back, at least on the visible side(= leaving a comment)
I hope this long comment makes you think but even if you just read it, I am grateful for your patience.
Enjoy your day. Have a good rest.
Be kind to each other – it’s quite rewarding when you do that.
Shai
Tay Doo-em? Petra Mee-dee?