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

Well someone last night asked where I was, because during the singing in both 2008 and 2009 ESC finals, I was in the TV Forum ESC Final chatroom, giving a running commentary about each song, and aired some rather humorous comments. Last night I wasn't beside my computer, and therefore couldn't go on the web (let alone TV Forum), so now you can enjoy that video as much as my witty comments last year.

Anyway last year, someone asked if I could put up videos of my dancing during certain songs (Greece, Azerbaijan, Turkey etc), but didn't have a video camera rigged up at the time so couldn't. That's why this time I bothered to film myself joining in with the interval dance last night so I could share the moment on YouTube and beyond.

Don't think we've seen the presenters full-screen for years - possibly since it went widescreen in 2005, and definitely not since it went HD (for broadcast) in 2007.

AIUI all the voting feeds are still 4:3 SD - so they frame the shots specifically for the scoreboard, and keep them shrunk so you improve the effective resolution. Some of the nastier composite SD feeds would look VERY cheesy full-screen in an otherwise beautiful HD show...

Didn't miss the map of Europe at all - after all we'd had the country outline before every performance. Remarked to myself how clean, simple and effective the scoreboard was - like all of the graphics this year.

Zooming in on a map takes a few seconds. They evidently wanted to keep the time per country as short as possible, they'll do anything to shave off a few seconds each country's appearance time so as to reduce the overall time for all 39 countries to vote.

I thought Graham was great - you could tell he was still sharp as a tack during the voting, Wogan had usually stopped making any sense half-way through. His commentary was sparing - but dead on most of the time. Encapsulating in a one-liner what you thought in many cases.

NRK did a brilliant job of modernising the contest, and showing that you don't have to keep spending more and more every year to improve the show. You just have to have good ideas. Big wins for me were the end of the traditional pre-song "postcard" (aka the time to re-set the stage), the replacement of a wall of LED with some intelligent and flexible set design, and an interval act that had huge ambition. Of course it wasn't live - I don't think they ever said it was.

The only fails for me were the "fake webcams" - both at the beginning (though it was a nice idea to have contributions from 39 countries - why a "webcam"?) and during the show.

When it comes to the text voting - I think the UK is an oddity in NOT using SMS voting - which is why the BBC had to keep contradicting the presenters.

I'm not sure if it is because the SMS-vote collection systems used here - which when investigated during the phone vote scandals - were demonstrated not to work acceptably in broadcast time frames (votes could arrive 24 hours after they were cast as they are not distributed in the same way as normal SMS messages) but other countries have better systems (or smaller populations but a better/different mobile infrastructure) - or whether other countries are using the flawed systems we used to, but deciding to ignore the issue...

As for the song rules - as long as it has never been released before the deadline you can do whatever you lilke with it after. In some countries you can buy the songs straight after the pre-selection show - and all over Europe you hear them on radio play. I bought my Melodifestivalen CD in March - and that had Anna's entry on it.

Where countries have neighbouring countries with similar cultural tastes it is usual for neighbouring countries' songs to be heard significantly, and the acts to appear on TV etc.

Of course if you purposefully chose your song early (as the UK did last year), tour all of the European chat shows (as the UK did last year), then your song becomes known and familiar, and you might do better (as the UK did last year when we came 5th).

Yep - and I'm wondering if they've shaved some delays out of the circuits (low latency compression?) as well - or just had a much better presenter who can cope with it. There were very few of the awkward pauses from previous years between the 1-7 points automatically animating on-screen and the 8,10 and 12 results being given vocally.

That's right - they're 4:3, and some of them look very ropey when viewed fullscreen. Helsinki had their presenter in the correct aspect ratio, but the background in 16:9 FHA. Which was a bit special.

The instructions from the EBU were to set the coders up in 'interview' mode, which is lower latency. Also, the entire voting sequence was rehearsed twice, which gave the presenters a chance to get used to the satellite delay. (Most of the presenters did all three, but I think Iceland's spokesperson sent her sister to the rehearsal.)

I did think it was rather convenient that ARD had arranged a big outdoor gig, and had their spokesman at it, and so could cut back to it once they'd won...

They have a big German crowd there every year though it certainly became much more useful than usual this year!

I'm sure they'd still do the maps in the voting if it wasn't for Kosovo. Indeed they haven't used the maps since 2007.

It wouldn't shave off any seconds anyway as the presenters were always talking when the animation was happening ("Now let's go to Germany" or whatever).

Germany have often done this in the past, with NDR (who I think organise Germany's Eurovision stuff each year) staging an OB for the contest. They've certainly presented their votes from that kind of location in the past - and this year it gave them a chance to take part in the interval act.

There are also issues with disputed regions between Armenia and Azerbaijan - so I suspect keeping maps out of it solves a huge number of problems



Yep - though in reality some of the animates were always a bit eggy in the past.

Yes, the contest has to be taken seriously, and that begins with the selection process and the song. Norton is not the issue.

The BBC now need to abandon the format of the last couple of years. Yes it brought some success with ALW but to me it seems bizarre that we are voting for an artist and not the song. It's not a singing competition, it's a song competition. The BBC have got it the wrong way round in their attempt to make it an X Factor type competition.

Seems to me that Eurovision was sidelined this year by their desire to bring in yet another dance format in the shape of 'So You Think You Can Dance', leaving no time in the schedule to do this thing properly.

He's one of the issues, in my view, the joking in the commentary has to stop. Deadpan presentation would impress the organisers and other competing countries, even if it puts a few viewers off.

If there's to be a restart for the UK in the contest he must be removed as part of the reset.

After some thought we also need to abandon a National Selection contest too, and adopt the French system for a while, The BBC appointing an external organisation to headhunt a writer and a performer who would work together to produce the entry, spending the saved money on promoting the artist and song, which must be known by Mid Feb at the latest.