The 50th Eurovision Song Contest

That might be true, but for those of us who don't have BBC Three, the Beeb kindly streamed the whole thing online!

James

I thought Iceland Were Gd

In Ireland we're all devastated at not having qualified
Okay, not quite devasted, but most hold a strong interest and it was very disappointing to have been left out.

There's serious questions being asked now as to our selection process here (we use an X Factor-like format). Frankly everything's up in the air now as people don't know whether to go back to the professional singer/songwriter process which may produce better performances but'll inevitably yield the typical ballad stuff that is a non-runner nowadays, or whether to go even further into the visual extravaganza mode.

In relation to the 16:9, I was looking back at Norway's production in 1996 and it was shot in 16:9 way back then! The copy I was watching is 99% likely to have been copied from the master source, not a 14:9 recording off the telly or something.
It must have been the first year it was used as the 1995 Dublin production was in 4:3.

Just looking at it again, it seems it was a 'film effect' that was applied with large balck bands at the top and bottom for dramtic emphasis during performances

Curious animation on the current BBC Radio 2 Eurovision site. They are still promoting a TV channel that doesn't exist!

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/promo/display/radio2/dtt1r46/-/promo/2002/wk46/dtt_promo1_choice.gif

Is that the BBC Choice one? Opps!

Terry is promising to be on full form this evening, But that flaming Kaplisky womens there, shes like the f-fing plague.

Oh god - prepare yourself for a load of posts complaining about this 'film' effect, and how it burns people's retinas.

It makes things look better than they actually are.

Get over it.

Oh, and it doesn't actually burn your retinas....

You're a Star is a mediocre format at best, and a terrible way to choose a Eurovision representative.

The previous two years we had those two dead Ballad singers, which to be quite honest, had not got the slightest chance of winning Eurovision, because although that's what the tweenies over here like to swoon over, few elsewhere in Europe will find them the least bit appealing.

This year we had Donna and Joe, nice try, and better then a ballad, but I really thought even as they sang it after winning You're a Star that it came across as so dead and hollow, no real passion in the song at all.

I quite honestly don't think Ireland has much chance of winning Eurovision any time in the near future, I really think that we will just end up switching between (as you rightly said) non-runner ballads and livelier songs that are undersang and empty.

Although the choice of song and performer(s) will of course have an influence on Ireland's future eurovision results, this 'block voting' business really has a much bigger effect on the results of countries on the western side of Europe, including the UK.

Changing the format of Irish selection will only slightly increase their chances of doing well because no matter what you send to eurovision (whether it be Westlife, The Corrs or U2), Cyprus will always give Greece 12 points, Ukraine will always give Russia 12 points etc etc etc.

One of the only effective ways to 'defeat the voting blocks' would be to fight fire with fire and form a 'western European' voting block between the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Andorra and Portugal.

Does anyone know any feeds on Sky Digital that will be showing the contest? I've found TVE International but according to Steve Wright there is about 4. Anyone?

Although there is usually a strong vote exchange system in the former Soviet Union, given the recent revolution, Ukraine may not get their usual 12 from Russia.

I don't know about Sky Digital, but BBC Prime are showing it, and the dutch have this event in widescreen but obviously without Terry Wogan.