Eurovision 2015 - 60th Anniversary Edition

You said it - crazy idea.

Look, I have an annual rant on here about trying the level the playing field and try and supress the bloc voting - but that idea would never work. Biggest issue - there are some countries who must be irritated that the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy get a free ride in the final, so it would really explode in the annual delegation meeting if the EBU announced those countries also had the ability to award higher marks than everybody else.

So, I've come up with all sorts of ideas. Splitting up, and grouping together the loosing semi-finalists, the accumulating their marks and awarding the 1-8,10, 12 as a series of groups dynamically during the voting - there would be no change for the awarding of marks for the finalists.
Or my favourite - no more than 6 marks can be awarded to a nation that borders yours by land or sea.

However, I'm now thinking there Is another way. Awarding marks from the jury, and then from the televote.
So the jury marks would be slightly different in they would be 1-10. These would displayed on screen first before the recalculation of positions , then the usual 1-8,10,12 based on the televote announced in the usual time wasting fashion.

Splitting off the jury points from the televote, which looks like their marks were based more on the musical aspect, rather than the performance, would help good songs achieve a higher score, and the ones that make best use of the LED screens would still get the weight of the televote. That would work.

Oh what a night! Last night's Eurovision Song Contest 2015 voting procedure was interesting, but it quickly became a three horse race between Italy, Russia and Sweden. For a while I thought Russia would win, but after the UK cast its votes Sweden overtook Russia and maintained their lead to the end.

Commiserations to Germany and Austria who finished with nul points. That's the first time a country has finished on nul points since 2003. That's the worst nul points ever! When the UK finished on nul points in 2003, there were 25 other countries who could have voted for the UK. This time there were 39 countries who could have voted for Germany, and 39 countries who could have voted for Austria, thereby making their nul points this year far worse than that of the UK in 2003. This must be the worst showing for the reigning champion / host country in the history of the ESC. Bad luck also to the UK's Electro Velvet who finished 24th out of 27th with just 5 points. Mind you, I didn't think much of "Still In Love With You" when I first saw its preview video early March.

So Sweden won with Måns Zelmerlöw "Heroes", scoring 365 points. That's Sweden's second victory in the 2010s decade and sixth victory overall to-date. Thus Sweden has achieved its shortest gap between wins to-date, 3 years (2012 to 2015). That's one of the shortest in the history of the ESC.

Well done to Sweden, the song was definitely catchy and I loved the animated drawings. However the songs I would have most liked to win were Montenegro or Italy, or even Australia. All three, in my opinion, were better than Sweden. Just to remind you, I voted for Estonia, Australia, Montenegro and Italy. If none of those could have won, I'd have preferred Russia to have won this time instead of Sweden as I thought Russia's song was better than Sweden's. Anyhow well done Russia for coming second and Italy for coming third.

Yes, and no. Although the 1-7 points of two of the countries were shown on screen before their links were lost, along with the new totals for those countries, these new totals weren't reflected when they moved onto the next country.

And quite rightly too, it's a song contest.... the audience are meant to vote on the song!

They'll never stop the same countries giving points to the same countries regularly, it's a cultural thing rather than an organised 'bloc'.

Of course country A are going to like the music of country B..... they're neighbours and 20 years ago they were the same country, or there's lots of people from country A in country B and there always has been. They have the same cultural background and so are going to have similar tastes or the performer is well known in both.

At the end of the contest though it doesn't matter if certain groups of countries always give votes to others it's always a good song that wins and that requires a lot of high votes from all over Europe, not just their friends.

The big problem with the BBC is despite their BBC Music 'brand' they simply don't have a TV programme featuring mainstream 'popular' music, and no I don't mean TotP. They do Glasto, Big Weekend and Jools yes, but there's nothing that regularly features material that'd feature on Radio Two's playlist. The knack of the art is lost.

An updated version of the Saturday evening variety programme is badly needed to fill that void, where a Country star, boyband or young crooner could show their talents in front of a reasonably large audience. It doesn't need to be brash with flashing lights and whistles just an outlet where entertainment is at the front.

Even Norton's show goes for complex music end pieces. If the BBC doesn't normally provide this, how can we reasonably expect them to choose rightly for Eurovision? This isn't a defence for the shocking choice again but a sort of reality check.

Although actually last night there were many exceptions to the usual rules when it came to the voting, with Russia position more down to votes from the West than their neighbours in the East. Last night was probably one of the best examples of the songs winning out - don't think anyone could really complain about their position on the leaderboard.

Then establish one. We've got four options I think.

One is for the BBC to send Ed Sheeran, Jess Glynne or one of their peers.

One is to go all out and do a UK Melfest with established stars.

One is to revisit Song for Europe but using BBC Introducing. Let's get five or six new singer-songwriters from varying genres and put them to a public vote. It doesn't even need a Saturday night shiny floor TV show, it could be done online.

And one is to revisit Your Country Needs You. Get a major songwriter - or even singer/songwriter - to write the song, and then have a public vote of vocalists who could nail it in Sweden.

Christer Bjorkman interview post show

Does anyone know who the artist is of 'Building Bridges.' Been scouring the t'internet but to no avail...

The song 'Building Bridges', as performed last night at the opening, is now available on iTunes to download. The artists are 'Conchita Wurst, Left Boy, Arabella Kiesbauer, Mirjam Weichselbraun, Alice Tumler, Die Wiener Sängerknaben, The Suparar Kids & The ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra'!

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/building-bridges-feat.-conchita/id996382162

That's the kind of track imo that would usually do well...The usual countries have got Eurovision worked out so well it's unbelievable.