"On his Saturday morning BBC Radio 2 show on Feb 16th, Graham Norton said that Ken Bruce would announce the artist on March 18th, with that artist appearing on Graham's show on March 23rd."
I am truly annoyed with the BBC. We only get to find out who it is in Late March!?!?!?
BBC are doing all things wrong with the ESC.
Sadly, I suspect the BBC simply don't really want to win it, especially at the moment when the License Fee settlement means budgets are being cut across the board. The contest is so expensive to stage and so commerically reliant it would cause no end of problems and criticisim. Last time the BBC hosted in Birmingham, the audience was 4,000 strong and during the end credits "The EBU would like to thank ..." ran before the commercial credits to get around the fact that the BBC couldn't thank Sony or whoever it was...
It will be interesting to see how SVT run the contest this year, they are similar in set up to the BBC, and though programmes can be sponsored, there are not centre-breaks AFAIK.
It will be interesting to see how SVT run the contest this year, they are similar in set up to the BBC, and though programmes can be sponsored, there are not centre-breaks AFAIK.
Suspect very similar to Oslo 2010? NRK have similar sponsor rules to SVT. Sponsorship bumpers before the show, but no adverts or sponsorship within the programme.
Slightly off topic to the current conversation, but I found some footage of one of the voting rehearsals from last year. It's a good opportunity to see what the process is when a spokesperson gets it disastrously wrong. I can't recall there's ever been this situation in any previous contests (apart from some minor slip ups).
Skip to 15:32:
I wonder what happened here: are the rehearsal points randomly allocated, and the Georgian team were sent the wrong set?
Interesting to note though that if this happened in a live show then the voting would move on, then as a last resort Jon Ola Sand would take over the reading of the points. Also that video shows that these days the scoreboard seems to be pre-programmed with the points rather than being controlled live (since the 8 points goes to the correct country, rather than the one read by the spokesperson). When poor Anna got it wrong in 2003, the points went to the country she said by mistake, rather than the correct one.
I'm guessing the dress rehearsals are rehearsed much more stricter and to the book than they had been before.
Back in 1995, this example from the Dress Rehearsal proved that the Russian spokesperson could pretty much say any country and give it points. Albeit he tries to vote for his own country, and award 9, 11 and even 13(!) points to some countries, but when Mary couldn't hear some of the countries he was saying, he'd simply just say a different one.
Also that video shows that these days the scoreboard seems to be pre-programmed with the points rather than being controlled live (since the 8 points goes to the correct country, rather than the one read by the spokesperson).
They probably have been pre-programmed since at least when they changed to automatically show who got points 1 to 7 (2006 onwards). My guess would be from 2004.
Last edited by Neo on 18 February 2013 1:10am - 3 times in total
That 1995 dress rehearsal is fascinating, haven't seen that before. Technical issues with the feedback aside, was that really Russia's loose grasp of the procedure or were they simply mucking around and not taking the rehearsal seriously?
There have been problems during the actual transmission of the contest over the years but nothing outrageously wrong for some years. Usually they spot the problem quickly, ask for a correction and if the voting country cannot get it right immediately they usually move on and come back at the end. One year, back in the 70s I think, when they did return to a country at the end, the votes had mysteriously changed.
That 1995 dress rehearsal is fascinating, haven't seen that before. Technical issues with the feedback aside, was that really Russia's loose grasp of the procedure or were they simply mucking around and not taking the rehearsal seriously?
I have a feeling it may be a bit of both. The guy giving the points wasn't the actual spokesperson, so possibly he was just a technician or somebody who agreed to do the rehearsal at the last minute so he didn't really have much understanding of how the voting worked? From his smile though I think he's perhaps trying and failing to be funny.
Or is it possible he was asked to be deliberately awkward so that they could make sure the presenter could handle a situation like that during the live show?
The postcards of this year's Eurovision Song Contest will be different compared to previous editions. This year's Host Broadcaster SVT want wants to use the films to present each artist instead.
Five teams with director, photographer and technical coordinator have started trips to Europe to meet with each artist. So far, the team has visited Iceland and their artist and on Thursday they're traveling to France and then to Italy.
"We will welcome all countries viewers and make them feel involved with the programs. In a way, we extend a hand to Europe - where viewers get to see "their" artist portrayed in their own country," says Sven Stojanovic, Creative Director and co-producer of the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö.
"We want the programs to constantly move back and forth, from Malmö to Europe, and back to Malmö," he adds.
It's nice to see something different being tried for the postcards. Hopefully they'll be more interesting than the usual fare, and perhaps reflect the artists' personalities better.
Last year got very repetitive by the end - good to see SVT doing it differently.
I really liked the approach used by Oslo in 2010 of never leaving the arena. They shot some simple scenes of people in each country and keyed them in using some VR and clever motion tracking of the jib/cranes in the arena. The virtual screens were made up of the bubbles that were the motif for that year's contest.
Great to hear that Sven is involved. He directed lot of the contests in the 00s (though not 2000 in Stockholm) as well as lots of MF.
Good to hear that we'll be getting a brand new graphics package this year too, the one they've used for the past couple of years was nice enough, but it's more interesting if it changes each year
