Mabel seems far too current to be a possibility - although reading up I find out she has Swedish blood in her, so that means Eurovision blood surely!
JLS would be the sort of contender you'd expect and I think they'd do a respectable job but doubt they'd win. Indeed when was the last time a group won - Lordi?
Last edited by Brekkie on 23 February 2020 11:29pm
Wouldn’t be a bad group to send and a reformed “boy band” has had some success for the U.K. (Blue came a respectable 11th in 2011). BUT. what’s often overlooked (especially in the U.K. for some reason) is it’s really the
song
(and related to that, the performance) that matters. Blue had an ok song, but the performance on the night I found underwhelming.
More damaging for Blue was their very poor performance in the jury-marked dress rehearsal. We came 5th in the televote that year but the jury score dragged it right down.
The problems are
1. Coordinating both the jury and public vote on the same day.
2. Maintaining the privacy of the Jury Decision and ensuring that the impression comes from a controlled performance.
3. Rapidly re-arranging the order of the televote declarations as a result of the Jury votes, these would have to all be in, verified and the Televote order computed within a short period of time, organising this would be an enormous headache for the producers.
I'd say only number two is a genuine problem there and it is fair to say they could be influenced by social media etc. 1 & 3 are only issues if they are made to be issues - they have 30-45 minutes to collate the votes and it shouldn't really take that long, whilst never agreed with trying to skew the televote in order to supposedly make it more "exciting" - don't think that has ever really been achieved.
Personally I'd still be dropping the jury anyway - it's only really with the new voting system that the public and overall winner can be different, previously that was more of an exception. Keep it simple and just let the viewers decide the winner - the only countries that moaned about that and got the juries reinstated were the ones that were **** anyway - and none have benefitted from a jury being introduced because they are still ****.
I understand the logistical reasons for jury vote being on Friday night. But in my view the grand final proper should be just that and the voting should be decided on that performance alone even if it does causes more headache organising.
The juries only came back in 2009 didn't they? I'd assume that it has been that way since then.
Yes (aside from a pointless jury wildcard in the 2008 semi finals). Before that the back up juries have been voting on the Friday dress rehearsal for as long as I can remember, perhaps since televoting was introduced in the late 90s?
The juries only came back in 2009 didn't they? I'd assume that it has been that way since then.
Yes (aside from a pointless jury wildcard in the 2008 semi finals). Before that the back up juries have been voting on the Friday dress rehearsal for as long as I can remember, perhaps since televoting was introduced in the late 90s?
Since at least the early 1990s. In 1994 caused Edyta Górniak of Poland broke the rules by singing her song in English during jury show on the Friday evening. Only six countries demanded that Poland should be disqualified, though the rules required 13 countries to complain before Poland could be removed from the competition. At the time the language rule was in place so this was a big deal.
It's worth tracing down the Norwegian national heat version on Mil etter Mil, just to hear how damm good that song actually was.
The performance in the final was pure self-sabotage. Jahn hated the big orchestral arrangement for the song (IIRC he fought for the simple arrangement used in the national heat, but NRK said no), so effectively destroyed the vocals with the shouting, whaling and over exaggerated dance 'moves' to fit in the instrumentals.
Sadly, he goes down in Eurovision history as a 'novelty' song performer, when the original was anything but.