Looking back

Well another year's contest is over and I'm now back at home. So what are my thoughts on the contest?

There are two things that stand out this year....

1. Belgrade's/Serbia's apathy towards the contest, and
2. The results (as always!)


So let's look at them in turn....

1. After the recent elections, it appears that Serbians are keen to join the EU and after many years of troubles, which I will not go into, I would have thought that hosting the Eurovision would have been an excellent way to show what they are capable of. However, in the city itself, you would have been hard pressed to actually know that the contest was taking place! For most of the week, the only thing you could see with regards to the Eurovision was that a few shops were cashing in on the merchandise, a single information stall in one of the squares and I saw one advertisment for the Azerbaijan entry (there may have been more).

So why did they not take up the opportunity? Was it that after the recent problems over Kosovo, they couldn't be bothered? Was it that they were only interested in making a good TV show? I for one certainly can't make out which one it is, but all I can say is that I was left deflated by their apathy.

2. The result! What can I say?! Ok, Dima's song was a good one, but that's all it was - ok. There were a number of songs which at worst were on a par with his song and they failed to get anywhere near. The neighbourly voting appeared this year to send the contest to an all-time low and I couldn't blame any country for withdrawing from the contest because of it. There seems no point in sending a good song any more to the contest as it appears that it doesn't matter how good your song. The country I feel most sorry for is Sweden. This year they sent a song which was head and shoulders above most songs and they firstly have to be saved by the jury vote in semi-final 2, only to do so badly in the final.

It's about time that the big 4 countries stood up and demanded that the EBU do something about the voting. The EBU took a small step in trying to deal with it in the semi-finals, but they might well have not done anything as they left the final alone, only for it to totally destroy any respectability that the contest had. So come on the big 4!

Enough for now, but expect more blogs on Belgrade!

Comments

Anonymous said…
I must say I agree about your disappointment in what may seem like neighbourly voting, but I don't think you can help this - certainly not in a fair way. You can't have a contest where EBU tells each country which countries they can vote for and whicch they can't. We just have to accept that the music tastes in different countries will be different and they will lean towards music that is popular in their region. If you start controlling who you can vote for that would certainly be the death of Eurovision Song Contest.
Colin said…
To anon,

I wouldn't be looking to say, for example, "Ok Georgia, you can televote, but you can't vote for your own country or a,b and c".

From some of the backup jury results that have come to light, there appears to be a more sensible approach to the voting, where the quality of the song does matter.

Therefore, what I would like to see would be a reduction in the weight of the televoting. So that a country's points are worked out by 50% televoting and 50% jury votes.

Now I can't see how that would be the death of the contest. In fact, I would see that as being the saviour of the contest. At the moment, the political voting is getting worse and is going strangle the contest into submission. The EBU have managed to do something with the semi-final voting, but amazingly left the final voting alone, so they might as well have left everything alone.

Thanks for your comment!
Anonymous said…
I don't believe there is such a thing as political voting. I believe that it is only a matter of countries voting for the type of songs or artists popular in their own region, music they are familiar with and can recognise. Hence why we see most of the Balkan countries voting for each other. I don't think this will change, their connections and roots are very strong. To say that you want to replace the public vote with a 50% jury vote is the same to say that the public's taste in music is not good enough for Eurovision. Once you open for 100% public vote there is no going back in my opinion without facing serious consequences. We just have to accept that people will like different music in different regions. The challenge will be to come up with a song that is universal enough to reach all audiences.
Anonymous said…
@ Anon,

I totally disagree with you. The voting in Eurovision has steadily got worse over the years and this year it hit an all time low. Maybe "political voting" is the wrong label for it. Maybe it should be "neighbourly voting".

If you don't think that this is in existance then you are suffering from denial.

When you leave the judging of a contest up to the public, you always going to have an element of human nature reflected in the result. This element being the voting for your neighbours or country's friends.

This trait is slowly turning a fantastic song contest into a joke and is starting to make countries wonder why they should bother trying to find a good song, when the result of the voting has nothing to do with the strength of the song. The best example of this is Ireland, who have such a good history in the contest. They are slowly getting fed up with the contest and this shows in this year's turkey.

So we all need to open our eyes to what's happening to OUR contest before it is strangled to death by the current voting!

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