Eurovision 2013 - 14/16/18 May 2013

The original discussion was suggesting that the BBC are sending poor songs as they dont want to win, and maybe ITV would be a better option, but someone said they couldnt afford to do it properly either. So I was answering that point.

The famous Linda Woodruff was just apart of Melodifestivalen on host broadcaster SVT in Sweden. Hopefully she'll be used during the final in May!

Voting for Melodifestivalen 2013 has ending and it is Robin Stjernberg with "You" going to Malmö for Sweden.

For once, I really couldn't be more underwhelmed. The Swedish popular vote has been overridden by the international jury votes, and not by any means for the first time, and so far, the song is really doing very little for me...

Big, big surprise result there. The first song to win from Andra Chansen and it didn't even win the televote tonight with a truly dire entry thankfully not going to Malmo. A well deserved victory for Robin.

Enjoyed that ... muchly. Gina and Danny were excellent hosts too.

Yes, Gina and Danny were great hosts, especially Gina, shes a hoot!

I have to say I liked Robin's 'You' but I'm totally surprised it won. I'm shocked 'Tell The World I'm Here' didn't do it actually. I didn't like it but I thought it'd get the popular vote.

Great show. Loved the opening (Kisses of Fire has always been a favourite Abba album track) - featuring previous and future Swedish Eurovision hosts. (Kattis and Anders are still one of the best presenting teams ESC has had IMHO)

Carola's performance of Främling 30 years after she won MF with it was stonking, particularly the audience singing with her at the end.

Gina was, as usual, brilliant (she's both very funny and very good), and Danny has got a lot better.

Lovely to see Lynda Woodruff take time out of her busy EBU schedule to do an in depth location report and bring some factual reporting to the show again as well.

As for the songs. Not a great year. Lots has been said about the lack of women in the final - but I think the song choices for the female performers are probably more to blame than any latent sexism in the Swedish public.

Wasn't surprised that Yohio was the public's choice. Wasn't surprised he wasn't the jury choice. Yohio was a striking performer with an average song.

I'd heard Robin gave a stonking performance in the rehearsal that the juries vote on - and he did a very good job again in the live show. The momentum of Andra Chansen, and the 'being an underdog' must have worked with him.

The shot of him when he realised, even though he hadn't won the televote, that he'd beaten Yohio and won the overall competition was amazing.

And second year running, the UK jury don't award any points to the overall winner?

** EDIT : No - we gave Loreen 6 points last year. My bad memory... **

Euphoria got 6 points last year.

Thanks for correcting my mis-remembering. I knew we didn't give it 12.

The Melfest finale can be watched on the link below for the next month (no geo-blocking). For some reason it's not in HD.

http://www.svtplay.se/video/1071366/finalen

With subtitles:

http://www.svtplay.se/video/1083838/finalen-direkttextad



The two former female hosts do apparently not work in television anymore, and had to be convinced to participate. When Treutiger and Lydia took the stage I half-expected to also see Karin Falck and Lill Lindfors from the 75 and 85 contests. They are both alive and well and can presumably sing.

Overall it was more epic than usual, particularly the opening and middle acts. Also lovely to see some old-style jury voting. Songs were horrible though.

http://i45.tinypic.com/98ez2s.jpg

Think SVT Play often only has SD versions of programmes streamed live, as I think they archive the live stream for future viewing, rather than re-encoding. Their news shows are SD-only on SVT Play, even though they're broadcast in HD these days.