The shake up of the app voting seems to have worked this year on Melodifestivalen. Splitting the app votes into age groups, ditching SMS voting, and putting the phone votes into a group of their own that has the same weighting as just one of the age bracket app voting groups seems to have balanced things a bit.
(There was a feeling that the contest voting was being dominated by 'the youngsters' since app voting arrived - which was good for the Swedish local music industry, but less good for choosing an act that is phone voted for across Europe by all age ranges)
I'm watching the Danish final now and it's very surreal, almost post apocalyptic! Gorgeous stage, shame it couldn't have had the audience there to make the atmosphere.
Songs extremely middle of the road as per Danish MGP tradition.
No audience, but for the first time in years, Denmark's MGP had a live band for the performances. At the very least, it provided a few extra faces to film in an otherwise empty venue.
It's unfortunate for DR that the government's request to cancel large events occurred only the day before Melodi Grand Prix. It left them with little time and few options to reconfigure the show to accommodate the lack of audience energy. It was certainly a tough night for the hosting duo - left to battle through with the rapidly revised plan. No amount of canned applause/laughter could rescue them.
I found Dotter’s vocal performance somewhat lacking. Good enough song, great staging but the delivery wasn’t as good as it needed to be. I’m not sure Sweden will get another top 5 with The Mamas, but easily left side of the board I would think. What do I know though!
A word of congratulation to the drone pilot at the start of the D-MGP. Steering one of those from an external aerial view of the arena down into a relatively small door and through the foyer of the venue into the, albeit empty, performance space must have been difficult, especially so live.
Pure speculation of course but Edward af Sillén on Twitter has a thread about what could happen if the EBU decide to scale back or change Eurovision because of Coronavirus. Edward has been involved in Eurovision and Melodifestivalen in the past but is just musing on what could happen this year. He has no insider knowledge apparently.
An interesting idea should the large audience event be banned is that each broadcaster contributes a TV Studio performance of their song, with or without an audience. While this is obviously a hell of a step up from the live voting contribution from around 40 countries, it is a fascinating idea.
The thread is here, partly in Swedish and partly in English
Funderar mycket på Eurovision som stundar i maj, om det kommer kunna ske...? Ser annars framför mig en lösning där varje land får uppträda live från tv-studio i sitt hemland, via satellit, och holländska programledare/mellanakter sker i studio Holland, men utan publik. Kan funka.
I'd be disappointed if they did anything other than delay it to later in the year. They don't have to hold it in May and the idea of doing it without an audience or some weird TV studios around Europe idea would be awful frankly. The Netherlands have invested a lot of money in the contest and they're only going to recoup that if people come to Rotterdam so they really should postpone it. They deserve the chance to be able to host it properly.
I'd be disappointed if they did anything other than delay it to later in the year. They don't have to hold it in May and the idea of doing it without an audience or some weird TV studios around Europe idea would be awful frankly. The Netherlands have invested a lot of money in the contest and they're only going to recoup that if people come to Rotterdam so they really should postpone it. They deserve the chance to be able to host it properly.
I would have disagreed with you a fortnight ago, but I think delay is now a real possibility. A lot of major events seem to opting for the delay option now, primarily due to China's case numbers sliding. It's offering a glimmer of hope that the virus should 'die off' within a few months and we can get back to some normality from around June onwards. Let's hope so, anyway!
