EUROVISION 2009 - MOSCOW, RUSSIA

Oh yeah, because national "juries" won't be more biased and subject to political pressure than thousands of people voting in their own homes.

A huge step back for the Eurovision just because there were people at the BBC who were very bad losers.

Rubbish. Of course the juries will be less biased. Whether this is enough to make it a fair competition though, who knows.

It's a shame that the first year where we might be in with a chance won't be commented by Terry, but there we go.

Well we can say goodbye to "ol'Eurovision with ol'Tel" - as I've hinted already, I can heavily see this turning into some kind of reality TV format just like Strictly etc.

So can you support that statement then?

..of course you need to accept that there's bias in the first place, which I don't, Dima Bilan won last year fair and square.

Yeah I don't reckon it's biased, it's mainly the way the voting pattern is.

Exactly - and I strongly believe that even a fixed public vote would be far more scrutinised than a panel of known or unknown jurors.

Yes - the results of the backup juries (which are always present in case televoting fails - or in smaller countries fails to reach a minimum number of votes cast) have confirmed that the voting is more varied than national televoting.

BTW - I'm not signing up to televoting being biased - just that it is becoming a bit boring! The juries may liven up the show a bit by throwing a few more curve balls into the voting.

Yes - nobody is questioning the winner of the contest - it is the lower placed countries that could be a bit more varied.

After all - this is a TV show - not an election - changing the voting structure to make it more interesting is just a way of making the show more appealing to a wider audience (countries are dropping out because of it after all - Italy, Austria are notable examples)...

In recent years it has become possible to do quite good result predictions just by stats and ignoring the songs - which appears to make it impossible for some countries to do well however good their songs are. (This isn't the same as saying you don't have to have a good song to win - but you have to have the right geography to get into the top couple of places...)

I would say that evidence is immiscible considering those votes count for nothing. Now their votes will mean something there would actually be a point in bribing them!

Immiscible? (Not mixable...) Not sure what you are getting at...

I think that the jury system will just add an interesting twist - as it does in the final of Melodifestivalen. Hopefully it will mix things up a bit (!)

I think it was always the case that juries still provided mixed results with curved balles being thrown in regularly from juries across Europe. I seem to remember allegations of political and neighbourly voting even under a 100% jury based system. What there obviously wasn't in old Eurovision though, was the now inpenetrable Eastern bloc voting. There was to a lesser extent, a degree of Scandinavian neighbourly voting which always got remarked upon by El Tel, but in a year with some decent songs, votes usually went with them.