Eurovision 2013 - 14/16/18 May 2013

Oh really? I didn't realise that.

One thing that the BBC didn't seem to have a problem with was Austria's act last year, Tracksh*ttaz. They must have been pretty confident they weren't making it through to the final because there was no word of the BBC objecting to the name prior to the contest. By lucky coincidence for them their performance during the semi ended up being on after 9pm and Scott did say it during the show but I wonder how they would have handled it if they had gone through to Saturday night and BBC One. Perhaps they would have made their own pre-song graphic.

I know.



Interestingly the BBC Three team pronounced the name as track-sh*ttaz.

Other broadcasters (including SVT I think!) called them the tracks-hittaz...

Good to see Denmark's winning song has charted at number 15, with Norway, Malta, Sweden and last year's winning song all in the Top 100.

Ratings update with BARB's final 2013 figure (and thanks to gottago for 1998's):

1998: 9.68 million
1999: 8.91 million
2000: 6.54 million
2001: 6.98 million
2002: 7.81 million
2003: 7.94 million
2004: 8.38 million
2005: 7.97 million
2006: 8.33 million
2007: 8.77 million
2008: 7.15 million
2009: 7.91 million
2010: 5.59 million
2011: 9.68 million
2012: 7.59 million
2013: 7.83 million

Slightly up on 2012, looks like 7 to 8 million remains as its average audience. More impressively so it was BBC's highest rated programme of the week, just beating EastEnders. Only Corrie and BGT outrated it across all channels.

Interesting. It kind of shows that event-based television still has a mass audience. The figures are particularly impressive given the rise of multi-channel since digital TV launched in 1998, and started to significantly erode "terrestrial" channels in the early 00s. That context makes the fact that 2013 got a higher audience than 2000-2002 quite impressive I'd say.

Interesting account of a frosty public diplomatic row between the Russian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers in Moscow ...

see here ……..

ENTERTAINMENT on SMH.COM.AU
29-May-2013 @ 00:07

I've posted some statistics on my blog about the history of the Eurovision Song Contest, taking Denmark's 2013 win into consideration.

The statistics shown there are as follows (you may click the following links to jump directly to the following sections).
Thirteen Years Of Different Winners
Years Taken To First Win Eurovision Song Contest
Still Waiting For A First Win
When Will They Win Again?
Gaps Between Wins
How Many Wins?

Here are just a few statistics arising from Denmark's 2013 win "Only Teardrops".
a) It was Denmark's third win to-date, having previously won in 1963 and 2000.
b) The gap between their previous win and this win was 13 years (2000 - 2013).
c) That was Denmark's shortest gap between wins to-date.
d) Even so, 13 years is still the eighth longest gap between wins (shared in with Sweden) in the history of the Contest.
e) Denmark's lastest win in 2013 happened 50 years (half a century) after their first ever win in 1963.
f) A different country has won the ESC every year from 2001 to 2013 inclusive (13 years): Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Ukraine, Greece, Finland, Serbia, Russia, Norway, Germany, Azerbaijan, Sweden, Denmark.

You could also add, on the last two occasions that Sweden have hosted, Denmark has won.

Since 2006 - Denmark (2013), Sweden (2012), Norway (2009) and Finland (2006) have all won. That's 4 Nordics in the last 8 contests - or half of the winners in the last 8 years have been Nordic?

Or if you look at the last 5 years, 3 of the last 5 competitions (2009, 2012 and 2013) have been won by Nordics.

(And since 2003 the contest's Exec Producer has been from a Nordic country - Sweden's Svante Stockselius and Norway's Jon Ola Sand)

Interestingly there are all sorts of fan rumblings about the new voting system introduced this year , and also question being raised about the impartiality of the juries in some countries, and the potential for phone vote (particularly SMS) manipulation in some.

I suspect the EBU releasing the average jury and phone vote ranks for the semi-finals and final hasn't helped - as they don't really tell the whole story. http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=split_results_of_eurovision_2013_revealed

I've just finished compiling updated league tables of each country's performance in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest from 1956 to 2013. They are all available here on my blog.

There are actually three tables.

Table 1: each country has been awarded 12 points for each time it's won, 10 points for each time it has finished 2nd, 8 points for each 3rd place, down to 1 point for each time it's come 10th.

Table 2: as above but the totals have been divided by the number of times the country has appeared in the grand final (N.B. Grand final means the single show that happened 1956 to 2003, and the grand final from 2004 onwards). This excludes years from 2004 to present in which a country entered a semi-final but failed to reach the grand final.

Table 3: as above but the totals have been divided by the number of times the country has entered, including years since 2004 when a country failed to qualify from the semi-final it participated in.

Interestingly despite the UK's run of bad results most years since 1999, it is still highly placed in all three tables; top of table 1, 4th in table 2 and 3rd in table 3.

Feel free to comment on these league tables here

This is quite an interesting video for Eurovision fans, it's Eurovision performances stripped down to their raw vocals.

When listening to the direct vocals I'm amazed we never came higher in the results. We by far had the strongest singer in the competition. A real pleasure for the ears.

Really - she still sounds bladdered.