Eurovision 2015 - 60th Anniversary Edition

Why would Russia have anything to do with it?

Have the political crisis between the 2 of them influenced things?

No. They've given their reasons for leaving in that article there.

They have, but was the financial problems caused by coverage of the crisis. Just think, don't answer.

What's the question?

I think Matthew was suggesting that the coverage of the Ukraine/Russia crisis has stretched Ukraine TVs finances? I don't know of Ukraine TV is state funded - but if it is, I suspect it isn't as well funded as it once was, with Ukraine having to fight a war internally? To be honest, I suspect Eurovision is not top of their priority list at the moment...

Eurovision must be pretty low on the list of priorities at the moment, there's all sorts of issues that we don't hear about that there's to deal with. Their sporting fixtures are all over the place literally. Shaktar Donetsk for example have moved hundreds of miles north west to Lviv where their UEFACL matches have been switched.

Given that the closing date isn't until March 2015, if, and I admit it's a distant if, the situation improves then they could still be a late entrant, there's been several precedents of withdrawals being reversed in the past.

No, the rules have changed this year.

Normally the deadline for participation is December. But next year is the 60th Contest, Diamond Jubilee, which means in order to begin the celebrations around the exact date, and to make sure all the paperwork is sorted out before the anniversary, the deadline for at least a chance of entering is September, BUT, with a deadline for withdrawal by October.

Thanks for that ....

Melfest changes announced today

SFs reduced to 7 entrants in each, from 8, still four of them - Winner and Runner Up to Final
Andra Chansen reduced to feature the third and fourth entrants in each SF, Duels continue between a third placed entrant and a fourth placed entrant .... Four winners of the Duels through to the final instead of a further run off to find two qualifiers
Final now 4 Winners of SFs, 4 Runners Up and the 4 Duel winners, 12 in total, instead of 10.

Vote restrictions of a maximum of 20 votes per entrant per show per phone introduced in all 6 shows.

The Duels part seemed to be milking things a bit as far as I was concerned. By the time we know the final participants I was getting a bit sick of some of the songs having heard them in the heats, Andra chansen and the duels. Meh...

They've flirted with the duel format before in AC. They even had multi-duels in previous iterations, with the winners from two duels then duelling to select a single winner. Twice. That got you from 8 to 2.

Interesting that there are only going to be 28 songs in total rather than 32 - I wonder if they're struggling to find entries of a high enough quality? Also I wonder whether the show will be shorter or they'll introduce another production element? I wonder if they will also ditch the mid-voting bit where they ditch the lower scoring songs?

A 12 song final will be a bit of a marathon...

And ignoring all that - let's hope they chose a stronger presenter pairing this time... Gina, Sarah Dawn Finer, Danny, Måns, Petra etc. were all really good in recent years. Nour and Anders were not that great in comparison.

According to the PR, the Running length of the SFs will remain the same, the additional 5 minutes spread amongst the entrants to 'get to know them better'. Andra Chanson will obviously be shorter with the reduced format. The final on the other hand should be around 10 mins longer, not too much.

One aspect of the changes, they should be making the final closer, statistically the additional two entrants will pick up votes from the Televote, so should reduce the proportionalities used for all entries. Even if the 11th and 12th entries only gain 5pct between them, that's 5pct less for the other 10 when the final votes are revealed.