Eurovision 2007 - Helsinki

I surpised that many people didn't see it as a winner last year, considering how it stuck out like a sore thumb. I think that song rightly won because it was original for Evsn, and the visuals/costumes they used were certainly impressive

Finland technically speaking isn't Scandanavian. Scandanavia is usually classed as Denmark, Sweden and Norway (and debately Iceland)

Finland is however a Nordic country... the Nordic coutries (AIUI) are: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Faroe Islands and possibly Greenland.

You are right in pointing out that Finnish language are related to Eastern European countries' languages; whereas the the other Nordic languages are Germanic (Inoo-European).

Ireland's Best Eurovision Performance Ever

Everyone in RTE was really optimistic about this. When I saw it I didn't know whether to laugh or cry

I thought it was a really nice song. Shame the nerves affected her performance.

Finnish is closely related to Estonian, and ethnically all the small Eastern Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) should really be brought under the "Nordic" category as well, Estonia in particular. Their cultures are closer to Western/Northern Europeans than the Eastern Bloc, despite the Russian influence.

It's quite right though that Finland isn't Scandinavian -- although isn't it the case that a great number of Finns actually speak their own dialect of Swedish? It certainly isn't East European -- not in any political sense anyway -- and a Finn would not thank you if you told him it was, given what that country went through at the hands of the Soviets.

You would have thought that with all these DVDs now coming out on an annual basis, someone might have considered adding a few tracks of alternative audio commentary to them (what with it being an integral feature of the DVD format and everything). The way the commentary is added at the time of transmission isn't really an issue as long as various broadcasters have retained tapes of the actual output - and the BBC surely can't be alone in doing so.

OK - So some refinement to the master plan.
42 European countries, so have two semi finals.
21 Western European countries sing on the Thursday evening and 21 Eastern European countries sing on the Friday evening. Voting takes place as normal with the usual 1-8, 10, 12 free for all but only for the countries taking part in that nights semi-final.
The Big 4 have a 15 point start.

The Eurovision final takes place on the Saturday night, and the top 9 from each heat goes through. Voting takes place as normal, however the 10 and 12 points have to be given to a country who qualified from the other sem-final.

Anyone care to pick this apart?

Just about every country apart from the big four, not understanding the reasoning behind the 15 points, would not vote for us out of principle, so that would backfire big-style.

The only way I can see of saving the competition is to bring back jury-based scoring. Televoting is never ever fair.

At the very least, bring in safeguards to stop people voting for the same act over and over again -- keeping a database of phone numbers and filtering out duplicates would mostly take care of that.

Other steps I'd take would be to do as you say and split the competition into East vs West, and maybe skew the votes such that a big country's votes mean more than a small one's, or even better make the act who actually got most votes overall get the prize, rather than winning because a bunch of small, poor republics had half a dozen people voting hundreds of times each, skewing the votes (which probably only run into a few thousand anyway).

I would agree with that.

Swedish is still an official language of Finland, and I believe Sweden ruled over Finland for a number of years. Swedish speakers in Finland account for 6% of the population-- little factoid for you

Thanks for that Jase.
First point - The 15 point start with The Big Four point was designed to try and make it fairer. The Big Four still get a concession for bankrolling the ESC (via the EBU - If I was throwing millions per year, I would want some favours for paying a small percentage of production costs) as opposed to getting a free card into the finals every year. On the other side, gives the other countries an incentive to try and play catch-up with the UK, Spain, France and Germany in the early stages of the voting.

Second Point - Televoting can be fair, if there are anti-sandbagging measures put in place. The one viewer, one vote idea won't work. The bigger population countries (Russia, Germany ect) will still vote in far bigger numbers than say Malta or Iceland. There has to be some form of neighbourly kneecapping put in place. Hence why I suggest come the final, in my plan the big points have to be given to countries on 'the other side' of Europe.

Yeah. I also think it's related to the Hungarian language. I know it doesn't matter, but afaik, Greenland is concidered part of North America, as Native Amercians/First Nations live there. But since it's under the jurisdiction of denmark, who knows?

Hmm, but possibly not with huge success...

Didn't the Italian entry come from the San Remo festival sometimes, and never win despite often being a country mile better than most of the other songs? (The Italian and winning Yugoslav entries from 1989 make an interesting comparison - or maybe the Yugoslav one has just aged less well)