Eurovision 2010 - 25/27/29 May 2010 - Norway

This doesn't seem fair to me. Surely there should be a rule that an entry cannot be released until after the contest has taken place?

Nope. It should be kept exactly the way it is. Else Russia's favourite would win every year.

And just because a country has a big population doesn't mean everyone in that country is watching.

There were things that annoyed me,

The so called 'webcams' in people's homes, which of course weren't live, or webcams !
The so called 'live' interview with Norton
The apparently 'live' flash mob' contributions from around Europe, when only one (Hamburg) was actually live,

At least Norton managed to dispel two out of three of those for us,

And why did the NRK presenter keep banging on about Text voting ? Were most other countries using it ? Again the net result sailed very close to an Ofcom fine here, fortunately Norton saved the day with that.

I personally don't see how he takes it any less seriously then Wogan.

At the end of the day, the viewers of the UK aren't going to take it seriously nowadays, so they aren't going to appreciate 100% serious commentary. Comments like the frock and the rain in Ireland are what a lot of people tune in for in the first place...

Yes and Eurovision gets more text votes than it does phone votes.

I think Germany will have a tougher choice deciding how to approach next year's contest than NRK did after Moscow. NRK decided to do a lot of things differently creating something very unique compared to the spectacle of the year before. But where does Germany go? Do they try the unique route again or go for another mind-blowing show?

Also someone mentioned on DS the other day that there was some controversy between the Armenian and Azeri delegations (again) on Thursday night as the map that came up on Azerbaijan's postcard showed some disputed Armenian land (or vice versa). Security had to be called in to break it all up. If you notice they ended up pulling a Serbia again and didn't quite feature all of Azerbaijan or Armenia on their respective maps last night!

Graham Norton was superb again last night again. He loves Eurovision and you can tell which is what makes it more enjoyable. He's certainly miles better than Wogan was in his later years. Let's hope he stays for many years to come.

Some comments, didn't like the 'Live from the stage' bits before each song. I also thought the scoreboard was too simple and static. We didn't see any of the presenters full screen and there was no map of europe zoom like we've seen before.

Norton was restrained, he could have said much more, and indeed Wogan used to do.

There is no excuse for the UK's performance this year, political bloc voting etc, the blame lies completely with a poor song, poor singer and the BBC's dire selection process which was done on a budget of 10p. That bloke who won last year is probably more well known in the UK than this year's UK entry, which says a lot. The BBC need to get fully behind next year's selection process and not just throw it out in a spare week between the latest singing or dancing talent show.

Last year up until the end of the singing, I watched the ESC final in my bedroom, and was therefore sat right next to my desktop PC, so I was able to participate in the chatroom in real time. You may remember I suddenly went quiet when the singing ended, and came back after the ESC ended; that was because I saw the interval and voting in the lounge, then just before bed had a final stint on the chatroom before midnight.

Last night I saw the 2010 ESC final in its entirety in the lounge, and therefore wasn't by my PC. I toyed with the idea of taking the PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse downstairs, and setting it up on the lounge-diner table. A lot of kit to move, and put back this morning. Furthermore to have got on the Internet at all downstairs, I'd have had to have moved the long network cable used to link my computer to the router, that would have meant going up the loft to pull it through, then dangling it out the window. And of course put that back this morning. A lot of hassle, and only worth it if there was to be a TV Forum ESC 2010 chatroom.

That's why I asked if there was going to be a ESC 2010 chatroom on TV Forum; by late afternoon I still saw no announcements of there being one, Therefore I didn't bother moving my kit, and therefore didn't. In the end, was there a ESC 2010 chatroom or not on TV Forum?

Sorry if TV Forum seemed a boring place without me after some of my humorous chatroom comments I made during ESC 2008 final and ESC final 2009. You must remember some of them, e.g. "Are you ready to boogie?" (you know where that comes from) just before last year's Greek song.

Anyhow, here's me "sharing the moment" during the pan-European interval dance last night.

Hasn't that always been the case though? The entries have always been out there in public across Europe long before the contest itself

The rule as I understand it is that it must be an original song which hasn't been released before... but that's before it's entered into the competition

The song can't have been performed publicly/put online or anything before 1st October. You do anything with song: take it worldwide, win awards, whatever as long as it hasn't been heard before the 1st October.

The UK got exactly what it deserves and personally the way the BBC have treated it I'd like them to be stripped of the rights. ITV, C4 and Five are all members of the EBU too so would have a claim to it - if they wanted it of course. Is there any kind of bidding process or does the BBC just get it by default - probably as nobody else wants it!

I don't know if ESCToday or anyone has done the stats, but would be really interesting to know if the juries the last couple of years have affected the overall winner - I highly doubt the outcome would have been much different without them?


P.S. Lowest ever ratings for the Eurovision on the BBC last night - 5.5m (5.8m with BBC HD). The previous lowest was 6.9m in 2001. Germany got it's highest ratings of 14.69m, twice the figure of last year - peaking at 20m, making it the most watch show in German TV history.

Watching that video is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Thank you, Tumble Tower. Thank you very much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esc_2009#Jury_result

That's last year's jury/televoting.