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Posted by: LexC 19th May 2019, 12:18 AM

That was the Eurovision that was!

This thread can serve as a springboard for all of the statistical analysis and tidbits that will emerge over the next day or two as well as speculation for what Amsterdam 2020 will bring, who ultimately made the wrong/right choices and what various countries need to do to have a complete rethink of their plan for next year *cough*UnitedKingdom*cough*

Posted by: AdamAloud 19th May 2019, 12:21 AM

North Macedonia coming to be the powerhouse of the 2020s *.*

Posted by: Cqmerqn 19th May 2019, 12:22 AM

I have a feeling that 2020 will be full of female bops *.*

Posted by: LexC 19th May 2019, 12:28 AM

With Mahmood so close to the top, I'm sure an Italian win is only a few years away at this point!

Posted by: eurovision4ever 19th May 2019, 12:30 AM

So it looks like we came last in the televote of 12 countries and second last in another 10. Awful

We were only not in the 20 somethings from a couple of countries

Posted by: LexC 19th May 2019, 12:36 AM

Turns out it wasn't so much the coming before Iceland as coming after Norway that killed off what little chance we had of a decent televote!

Posted by: Cqmerqn 19th May 2019, 12:46 AM

I’m sad

Posted by: Golden Maknae 19th May 2019, 12:58 AM

I’m surprised we’re not playing the “who will drop out next year after they dnq’d this year” game like we did last year

Posted by: Umi 19th May 2019, 01:07 AM

I think North Macedonia and San Marino qualifying has done a lot to alleviate that. Last year I think we spoke about both of those, plus there was a bit of speculation about Azerbaijan (which thankfully ended up being silly). I guess we could ask questions about Montenegro this year, but I think we've landed in a good spot where most countries have a qualification in recent memory at this point, thankfully!

Posted by: Houdini 19th May 2019, 01:25 AM

The gap between UK in last place and Belarus in 2nd to last was quite big. I wonder if there has been a bigger gap than 15 points between the last two positions?

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 01:36 AM

I think the organisers have to find a way to shorten the show. The interval time this year was far far too long, i just think for any kids who like to watch the show it ends far too late. The time between the last song and the vote could easily be shortened by 10 minutes. The juries should also be warned to just announce the 12 points quickly, e.g that guy on the Polish jury went on too long. I think even if they could shorten the show by 30 minutes it would benefit it overall. I know its only a small thing as Israel they did a great job.

Posted by: Burns 19th May 2019, 02:50 AM

10 WHOLE MINUTES!

Posted by: Iz~ 19th May 2019, 03:52 AM

I feel like we say this every year. It will happen but it could be one or ten years from now.

Can’t see anyone dropping out for results related reasons, none of the likely suspects are holding a bad record. It’ll be financials if anything (or possibly Icelandic sanctions, there were some rumours about that after Hatari’s stunt earlier)

British televote was shite because we offered nothing new in between two songs that did. The song has to make people across a whole continent feel something and that did not do it. Our gap up to Belarus was large because this voting system is relatively new, don’t read anything into that. Incidentally I’ve just realised this means the bottom two at the start of the decade is the same two countries as at the end of the decade

And then finally, yes, show has gotten far too long. That wouldn’t have finished until 2am In Israel. Maybe the Dutch will give us a shorter show, I can’t see how they’d make it longer, plus Israel went all out with guests being invited.

Posted by: Sinner 19th May 2019, 06:49 AM

I don't follow the logic here. How do you mean?

Posted by: SKOB 19th May 2019, 06:51 AM

It's frustrating how well Italy has done without winning... Hope they'll keep trying, the #1 ESC country by far of the 2010s and Soldi is their best attempt to date. Totally gorgeous.

Finland (my country) coming dead last in the first semi was hilarious. It was super awful performance so can't really complain.

The show was too long, yes, but not because of the voting. It was that long because THREE interval numbers (or four if you count the Gal Gadot insert). I believe the Madonna one was something that they hadn't originally thought that could happen (as the contract was signed in last minute, on Monday I believe?) and had the other two to begin with. But of course they didn't turn Madonna down. In the Netherlands we will not have such a problem.

Posted by: Suedehead2 19th May 2019, 09:37 AM

Turning Madonna down would have been a relief for all concerned

They need to look at when people voted. If the number of votes being cast tailed off in the last fifteen minutes, reduce the voting time by fifteen minutes next year.

While some of the people announcing the jury votes took too long, that pales into insignificance behind the time taken to announce the last two scored from the phone vote. Rather than telling us umpteen times how many votes Sweden needed, just get on and give the figure. Next year, I would be very tempted to keep a tally of the phone vote scores in a spreadsheet so that I know how many points are left to be allocated. If I'd done that, I would have known the Netherlands had won from the moment the "two hundred" part of their score was announced. I could have been in bed and asleep by the time they gave Sweden's score.

Posted by: PaulM1983 19th May 2019, 09:59 AM

They can definitely shave some time from the presenters. Actually having the information they need, when they need it will help. There's an awful lot of improv and filling going on at crucial moments (it doesn't help when some presenters just don't have the skills to pull this off).

I'd prefer the representatives to have a set time limit - enough to have a quick bit of banter or a joke and then give the points and be gone. Some of them take way too long.

The interval is also ridiculously long. The suggestion above about looking at when the votes tail off is a good one. They could definitely cut some time there, and have just one main interval act and not a whole variety show going on. It should be so easy to cut 30 minutes from the show as a minimum.

Posted by: coi 19th May 2019, 10:11 AM

The UK's only three points from the televote were from Ireland. Yep, we failed.

Posted by: Iz~ 19th May 2019, 10:14 AM

They absolutely shouldn't have told us what figure Sweden needed to overtake indeed. I was annoyed at that but for a different reason: If in the event they HAD been able to overtake, or hadn't but came pretty close, the extra few seconds of tension while everyone does quick maths in their head is far preferable at times like these.

A conflation of statements that in putting that all up in mobile I moved a few steps too fast. The voting system is new, meaning records of along the lines of 'most gross points' are common because the voting system involves larger point numbers, twice the point numbers as previously. Therefore to talk about gaps and smashing records based on the actual number of points is a bit misleading and I don't like to do any that include contests with other voting systems as it isn't comparable. However it IS the largest gap between second-last and last, but that's because the previous two attempts were 1 points and 6 points respectively. Bigger Than Us is also only the third-least scored finalist on this system. Because literally only three contests have been done under it.

Posted by: Klaus 19th May 2019, 10:22 AM

The voting reveal needs to be sorted out. I know you can’t lose the whole ‘London calling’ but it places to much emphasis on the jury votes so everyone comes away thinking Sweden did better than they did and Norway did a lot worse than they did. When they revealed Norway’s points from televoting, I was like wow that’s a lot but you weren’t aware it was ultimately the highest overall.

tbh I think the value of the juries needs to be looked into? Without looking at a complete breakdown of the scores, there’s still the political element in the jury votes with Greece & Cyprus still swapping 12s and Montenegro giving Serbia a 12. Ultimately the jury is 5 random people’s opinions, how much are they benefiting the results?

and im not just saying this because the juries did Norway dirty

Posted by: SKOB 19th May 2019, 10:41 AM

But how could've they known that Norway got that much points from the televote compared to juries? It's not like EBU decided to do it this way in last minute. It was decided probably weeks ago.

I mean for the tension this system was perfect imo!

Posted by: coi 19th May 2019, 10:42 AM

Yeah the big plus with that method of announcing votes was the incredibly tense moment at the end as they announce whether the Netherlands or Sweden won.

Posted by: Sinner 19th May 2019, 10:51 AM

I get you now. What I took from your statement, and I was reading between the lines, is that : the voting system is new. It will take some time to bed down, so to speak and then the gap will get smaller between the last and second last place.

Which I could not figure out the possible reasons for, in my head.

Thanks for the detailed answer.

Posted by: Sinner 19th May 2019, 10:52 AM

Agreed. The way they had been doing it was great. I didn't think they were able to add more tension but they did.

Posted by: Sinner 19th May 2019, 10:52 AM

Agreed. The way they had been doing it was great. I didn't think they were able to add more tension but they did.

Posted by: *Tim 19th May 2019, 10:56 AM

It was horrible for my poor hearr and lungs. I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing for the whole time they kept repeating how many points Sweden needed

Posted by: Iz~ 19th May 2019, 11:06 AM

There's problems with putting the televote reveal first as well, when the juries dethrone a televote winner the reaction could be much worse from the public. And tension wise it's hard to see it getting much better than this system.

I mean, the main issue is the jury makeup getting such different results from the public. There's only 5 of them, I've always said there need to be more (I assume the problem is cost) or they need to be more diverse and represent music industry professionals from a larger variety of musical backgrounds. The intent is to get an opinion from those who are experts in music, right? Then they shouldn't be able to ignore anything with obvious mass appeal unless it's clear novelty tripe, which Norway clearly wasn't. You need people who'll make up a more informed microcosm of the public's music taste, that can discern through 'populist' music (closest thing I can think of is San Marino this contest) and reward well put together songs.

I mean the list of official guidelines has it here:

• The vocal capacity of the singer;
• The performance on stage;
• The composition and originality of the song;
• The overall impression of the act.

Was Sweden original? Not really. Overall performance wasn't that memorable, so why did it win? North Macedonia not so much to an extent, but that can be countered by a favourable impression. So I'm looking at this list and I'm wondering, where was Iceland in the juries? It should have scored very favourably on all of these metrics... except if the juries just didn't like it because of their taste, which isn't what they're supposed to be scoring on. It's a very well put together song for its genre and there has been nothing else like it in the contest for years. Same for Norway, the technical harmonies, the performance, the originality, should have meant it scored highly. Hell MIKI of all people should have scored far higher on at least impression and performance. Slovenia too. Many of the jury darlings should be struck down for unoriginality.

Put simply, I don't think the current crop of singer-songwriters, singing teachers and label people are doing a good enough job of this:


See, at the moment, there's a type of song they'll go for, Sweden have got it nailed as to what it is and the public consistently find it boring and overdone, and there's far too great a disparity for such a small amount of people to be making up half the vote.

Posted by: AdamAloud 19th May 2019, 11:10 AM

It would've still been tense had it come down to had Norway got enough televote points to win imo. 261 televote points for second isn't much considering Jamala got 323 in 2016, there would've been a moment where there was a real possibility Norway had absolutely dominated the public vote and snatched it at the last moment. Doing it this way shifted the focus from the public winner to the jury winner and I don't really like that.

Posted by: Liаm 19th May 2019, 11:26 AM

It's not so much about Norway, of course they didn't know they would top the televote and not do so well on the jury when they decided it weeks if not months ago, but I think it just doesn't work in practice. As I said in another thread, it kind of robs the televote winner of their moment so nobody really knew that KEiiNO won the televote., I didn't realise until after when someone pointed it out because it's too tense and you're too into it to sit and do maths or hold the numbers in your head of who's where. I of course realised that they had a bloody good televote but because that's not a typical winning score I didn't click and that format didn't give you room to work it out or realise who won.

It's one of things though where the way that's "better" is going to depend on the results and obviously we don't that until after it's happened, but I think on balance the way they did it 2016-2018 was fine. It still splits the votes and gives the potential for that shock in the televote but it doesn't put too much emphasis on the jury. It was just a bit anticlimactic when the jury top 2 were hyped up so much and then got mediocre televote points in North Macedonia's case and good but not great in Sweden's case. The "normal" way rips off the bandage for them quicker and just gets onto their disappointment quicker

Posted by: Cqmerqn 19th May 2019, 11:37 AM

Vote for Arcade here tbh http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=222384&st=0&#entry6240276

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 11:37 AM

The new way was tense and exciting but I agree it does rob the televote winner of their moment as tgey never said at any point they topped the televote.

Posted by: TheJüpreme 19th May 2019, 11:48 AM

Surprised people are surprised at the UK result. You guys always send a competently performed track (sometimes not even that) that sounds nothing like anything on the radio or remotely modern, you have english as a first language yet your lyrics are always shite and trite, and lately you're the country that's stuck up a middle finger to Europe with Brexit. Any one of those things alone would be damning.

Posted by: *Tim 19th May 2019, 11:54 AM

How do they expect people to love their song, when they don't even stan it themselves

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 11:56 AM

Brexit effects Ireland greatly put still gave UK 3 points so some people in my opinion purely base the vote on the song they like and not which country they like or dont like.

Posted by: TheJüpreme 19th May 2019, 12:06 PM

Sure, but it won't be helping.

Posted by: Suedehead2 19th May 2019, 12:11 PM

The problem with the previous method of announcing the votes is that it potentially makes it easy to work out who has won. If, for example, a country is given 250 points, you know that whoever is left has got at least 250 points. With yesterday's method, you could only work it out by keeping a tally of how many points remained to be allocated.

The point about the winner of the public vote being unacknowledged is easily remedied. All they need to do is show, for example, the top three scores to date on the screen somewhere.

Posted by: *Tim 19th May 2019, 12:12 PM

Tbh this would be great. That way people known "all 3 winners"

Posted by: Klaus 19th May 2019, 12:16 PM

There just needs to be greater recognition of what the public votes are/mean.

As I said, most people will have come away last night thinking the Top 2 is Netherlands/Sweden.

I definitely agree wuth Iz that there needs to be more people on the juries.

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 12:33 PM

The juries seem very dated going by the results and the gap between juries and televotes is far to big which to me shows something isnt working. The North Macedonia and Norway votes show that clearly.

Posted by: *Tim 19th May 2019, 12:35 PM

North Macedonia was a song of high quality with immense vocals and excellent staging. It's just not a song that's gonna get a lot of people to pick up the phone

That's why I like the juries. It's not just about spectacle to attract as much attention as possible but also about the qualoty of the songs and the sometimes raw emotion

Posted by: LexC 19th May 2019, 01:09 PM

So the "Tel Aviv vs Jerusalem" of this summer looks set to be "Amsterdam vs Rotterdam". I imagine it'll either be in Amsterdam's 17,000 seater Ziggo Dome or the 14,000 seater Ahoy in Rotterdam. I imagine it'll be the former as it's bigger and newer but either are doable.

Posted by: *Tim 19th May 2019, 01:19 PM

Den Haag and Maastricht are also in the running!

Maastricht has the seats and the spce around the venue but it lacks infrastructure to get there so that would be a problem

Posted by: LexC 19th May 2019, 02:38 PM

So, if the final had used the 2013-2015 Scoring method, the results would have looked like this:

01 316 Netherlands
02 293 Italy
03 208 Switzerland
04 190 Russia
05 179 Sweden
06 165 Australia
07 164 Azerbaijan
08 150 Norway
09 135 North Macedonia
10 100 Iceland

11 60 Denmark
12 58 France
13 51 Slovenia
14 48 Czech Republic
15 46 Albania
16 43 Serbia
17 36 Cyprus
18 33 Estonia
19 28 Malta
20 25 Greece

21 16 San Marino
22 14 Belarus
23 12 Israel
24 8 Germany
25 6 Spain
26 0 United Kingdom

*San Marino would have been all Jury because of their small population and Belarus would have been all televote since their jury was dismissed

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 02:50 PM

The Belarus votes were the strangest of the night.

Posted by: Jacky boy 19th May 2019, 04:23 PM

I enjoyed it.

However, I did think the presenting was poor throughout. A lot of talking over one another. Comments that didn't really make sense. Lots of correcting going on. "Moving on" said about a million times. It just wasn't as slick as it should be. Ad libbing has a really fine line between sounding good or just being naff. Also they kept miscounting how many countries were left during the televote reveal. Screen graphics were too slow on several occasions too. And that blonde presenter was incredibly wooden and uncharismatic.

Have a feeling the Netherlands will do a much better job.

Cannot believe San Marino polled 10th for the public vote I still like the new televote reveal, but as expected it did lose some of the excitement of knowing the ranking on the night.

And the UK what can we say? We all knew it would do poorly. We had really poor options to choose between on the cringeworthy selection show. It's just not good enough; I don't think the beeb wants to host it.

Posted by: TheJüpreme 19th May 2019, 05:51 PM

UK 0 lmao

It was an odd Eurovision for sure. Agree with the above. The presenting was quite ESL and I wasn't even particularly drunk this year either :')

Posted by: Bré 19th May 2019, 08:48 PM

Apologies if this has already been answered elsewhere and I just missed it but what exactly was Belarus' 'jury vote' if their jury was dismissed? Was it literally randomised? Surely can't have been based on other juries considering they conveniently gave Israel 12 points when they got (iirc) 0 points from all the other juries...

I thought the new reveal method for the public vote seemed like a potentially decent idea but it doesn't work in practice, like others have said it just means Norway didn't really get a proper moment to shine. And the suspense for Sweden's televote score was excruciating and ended up extremely underwhelming with him not even being close. I feel like it even took away from the moment for Duncan as well as being devastating for John.

Posted by: Burns 19th May 2019, 09:06 PM

Not sure if these have been posted or which thread would be the right one to post them in but these are the Semi 1 and Semi 2 results for televote only:

SEMI FINAL 1 - TELEVOTES ONLY
1 ICELAND 151 Q
2 AUSTRALIA 140 Q
3 ESTONIA 133 Q
4 SAN MARINO 124 Q
5 SLOVENIA 93 Q
6 CZECH REPUBLIC 85 Q
7 SERBIA 65 Q
8 POLAND 60
9 CYPRUS 54 Q
10 GREECE 54 Q
11 BELARUS 44 Q
12 PORTUGAL 43
13 GEORGIA 33
14 HUNGARY 32
15 BELGIUM 30
16 MONTENEGRO 15
17 FINLAND 14

SEMI FINAL 2 - TELEVOTES ONLY
1 NORWAY 170 Q
2 NETHERLANDS 140 Q
3 SWITZERLAND 137 Q
4 RUSSIA 124 Q
5 AZERBAIJAN 121 Q
6 SWEDEN 88 Q
7 NORTH MACEDONIA 84 Q
8 LITHUANIA 77
9 ALBANIA 58 Q
10 MALTA 50 Q
11 DENMARK 41 Q
12 CROATIA 38
13 MOLDOVA 27
14 ROMANIA 24
15 ARMENIA 23
16 LATVIA 13
17 IRELAND 3
18 AUSTRIA 0

So literally the 10 qualifiers in each heat were in the televoting top 11, pretty consistent!

Posted by: Suedehead2 19th May 2019, 09:13 PM

I'm glad I'm not the only one not knowing where Belarus's jury votes came from

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 19th May 2019, 10:05 PM

Weren't the jury votes disqualified?

Posted by: danG 19th May 2019, 10:12 PM

Yes but they've seemingly magic'd up some fake 'jury votes' from them, which oh so conveniently gave Israel 12 points that they probably wouldn't have got.

(would also like to know what the actual method was)

Posted by: Jacky boy 19th May 2019, 10:19 PM

Re Belarus jury vote

It just says 'aggregate' - maybe something to do with Belarus' historical voting? Perhaps doesn't explain it as their result doesn't reflect historical voting, but just an idea.

How else might they have got to their result?

Posted by: AdamAloud 19th May 2019, 10:33 PM

I think they just assigned the scores based on the final result from the other 40 juries that would've kept the result the same at the top but helped the lower performing countries - I mean 12 to Israel when they should've come last is a bit off but I suppose they didn't want to have to come out and say "Israel are currently in last place" when it came to the new televote reveal.

I know their jury broke the rules quite spectacularly but I am fundamentally against ANY "aggregated" results in Eurovision, it's the same with San Marino's televote scores every year, a damn mess.

Posted by: Feel_The_Fever 20th May 2019, 02:23 AM

That sounds really off the way Belarus votes were handled.

Posted by: J▲hq 20th May 2019, 06:36 PM

Apologies if this has been clarified elsewhere as I’m still catching up but I heard that the Belarus ‘jury vote’ took the other countries from their pot (the one that’s used for the semi-final allocation draw), and based the points on the BOTTOM 10 from those other countries? Presumably to affect the top of the scoreboard as little as possible though I have heard the made up votes helped Norway come 5th (which sounds fair enough since they won the televote)

I don’t get how they decided this was the most logical way to go about it though. If they didn’t have time to find five new jury members, I thought the best idea would be to double their televote. Or just not dismiss the jury - sure they revealed votes for the first semi, but we weren’t to know what they thought of the big 5 + Israel and the semi 2 qualifiers? It’s not like the Armenian and Azerbaijani juries have ever played fair yet they continue to get away with it...

Posted by: Jacky boy 20th May 2019, 07:36 PM

Article here (not that I read the Mail Online or anything ) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7049261/Britains-Eurovision-flop-Michael-Rice-WORSE-five-fewer-points.html

Yeah it really makes no sense. Can someone please remind me how San Marino's televote is calculated? Isn't it something to do with averaging all juries? Surely this would've been better?

Posted by: Sinner 20th May 2019, 08:41 PM

Are there even 5 people living in San Marino?

Posted by: Conanderella 20th May 2019, 10:18 PM

don't forget a GODAWFUL dress

Posted by: cantthinkofaname 20th May 2019, 10:40 PM

I really don't understand why the juries didn't latch onto Albania though. It's an interesting and beautiful song with stunning vocals. I definitely expected it to do better than that.

Posted by: Monzo 13th June 2019, 04:11 PM

I got a feeling that this year's Eurovision will go down in history as the worst of all time.

In a few years when we talk about which year was the worst most people will say 2019 because of that Madonna desaster and the voting scandal.

Before the final hour and the aftermath I'd say it was an on average show, but then it went down: Voting time was too long and it felt it was all about making money instead of giving viewers more time to vote. Running time for the whole show was too long, for the West European countries it might be okay, but for the rest it's too late. If I'd live in East Europe I'd tape next year's final because I wouldn't spent the whole night just watching endless interval acts until the showdown starts.

Looking back Madonna was the best of the worst, because her performance was kind of funny, in a bad way, of course. The hype about her during the whole event was over the top.

To be honest I'm getting sick of Jon Ola Sand. He's been Eurovision's Executive Supervisor for the whole decade and it's time to bring in someone new with fresh ideas.

Posted by: Vülker 13th June 2019, 07:44 PM

I'd recommend you rewatch the 2004 and 2011 shows, love.

Posted by: Monzo 14th June 2019, 06:24 AM

2004 had a voting scandal, but a good show. 2011 got one bad host out of three, but a good show, that's still better than 2019 with a superstar desaster and a voting scandal.

Posted by: J▲hq 14th June 2019, 09:33 AM

Personally I think when fans talk about which year was the worst, they will base it on the songs.

Posted by: Vülker 15th June 2019, 01:49 PM

What vOtInG sCaNdAlS are you even referring to here?

Posted by: Monzo 15th June 2019, 05:04 PM

Since you mentioned 2004 as one of the two worst years I thought you meant this scandal, you can read at Wikipedia about it. So what was so bad about 2004 IYO?

Posted by: gooddelta 24th July 2019, 09:03 AM

This year's entries have proved to have way more longevity for me than any contest since maybe 2009. I'm still regularly spinning Zero Gravity, Too Late For Love, Soldi, She Got Me and Arcade.

So many great tracks deservedly finished in the top 10 this year <3