Eurovision 2015 - 60th Anniversary Edition

They could have a different scheduling system that helped.

eg.
* If in the final lost video connections are causing it to overrun, by later going back to that voter and re-asking for the votes from scratch, you could not go back to that voting country if time is needed to be made up, since you already will have the votes digitally from the country. The commentator could say that they have their votes.

* If they are in the final voting and it's calculated that they will overrun by a certain amount if continuing normally, they could try to ensure that the order they go to the last (few) sets of voters would have no affect on the final result. eg. if there are 2 remaining voting countries to go and their scores would not affect who the winner would be, they could not go to the video feed for those countries, and instead, if wanted could quickly display their votes that were received digitally.

* If overrunning, they could speed up the animation of scoreboard score-blocks. Or show them in the final position for that voter without animation.

* They could have a video buffer of x seconds. It would be less live so not as good, but it could give the option to remove shots from the buffer if overrruning - if it wouldn't be noticeable.

* The scheduling system has everything split into a series of time blocks and if time really needs to be made up, bits not vital could be skipped/shortened. What happens could be changed, eg. hosts given different, shorter dialogue to announce. eg. less of a fixed system, but could be helped by software with rules about what should occur depending on how on schedule the programme was.

Okay things like this wouldn't be a 'guarantee', but may allow a higher probability of it not overruning, or if it did, it would likely overrun by less.

Yes - in theory they could. Just as they could stop accepting votes once a winner has been announced, and then they could animate all the rest of the votes onto the board to give you the final result (as the EBU know who has won as soon as they start taking the results from spokespeople). However that massively goes against the spirit of the contest - people in every country stay to watch the voting (it rates higher than the singing in many countries) because they want to see their voting spokesperson and find out how their country voted, as well as seeing how other countries voted.

There would be a real fuss kicked up if the UK spokesperson wasn't used and was replaced by the hosts or an animation, and I suspect the same would be true across the EBU, particularly if they were dropped because of timing issues.


That would be very tricky. There are only 8 transponder slots for the satellite televoting, and you couldn't change the order sensibly for allocating these once you were on-air. It would be a recipe for dual illumination, slots being missed etc. It isn't as if all 40 countries are sitting there on the satellite waiting to contribute. It's technically pretty tight to get the votes done as quickly as they are with 8 transponder slots. You have to fire up and come down off the satellite pretty quickly. Changing the order would be really difficult - as every country would need to know about the change to avoid two countries being on the same slot at the same time and causing neither to work.

Some countries are far from experienced in this stuff...



Yes - or they could always fire the animation immediately - which they didn't always do. One thing that doesn't seem to have been absorbed by all broadcasters is that you no longer really need to say "Here are the first votes" as that animation cue should have gone. You should just say "Good Evening Vienna, this is XX, here are the results from YY" "Our 8 points go to, our 10 points go to, our 12 points go to". No need to say anything else...

The host broadcaster could also speed things up a bit by not dropping in energy sapping and time consuming wide shots all the time.



That would be very difficult to implement. The sound feed that the voting countries listen to is embedded in the main transmission feed - you'd end up with totally out of sync comms (as countries would be voting before they saw themselves on screen, and wouldn't know they were next etc.) compared to the programme.

Recipe for disaster. And not being live would be a real editorial issue. Plus trying to do live edits on EVS during a complicated voting window would be mad.



Yes - though doing that on a complicated high end show could really cause you to come unstuck, plus you couldn't drop anything within a break as these have to be kept to a fixed duration.

The real issue is usually that the gaps between songs are underestimated by a few seconds each, which cumulatively adds up to quite a long time, and the voting is always underestimated too. If you go in with a sensible time based on what happened last year you will do far better than if you optimistically hope you can do it better... When you have next to no control over the time taken by spokespeople that's madness.


But sadly most of those solutions aren't really practical.

Speeding up the animation could work, but the reality is that the show doesn't over run, it is usually just under timed. It isn't as if the rehearsals run shorter...

Interesting debate. X Factor manages it every week, and their Arena Finals - pretty much on the scale of putting on Eurovision minus the results logistics - are always to time.

BBC One happily show lots of football matches every two years which don't involve home nations. They also think nothing of Wimbledon royally f**king up the schedules.

An over-run is not an issue. You either schedule a repeat after the Ten that is easily droppable, or "slide the network".

Yes - though X Factor is more like a semi-final, and they are usually better at running to time. (And X Factor doesn't always run to time). It's also quite a different show - as X Factor can keep the show on time by stretching or squeezing judges comments and post-performance reaction interviews, which Eurovision can't do. (And they can also have long and short VTs standing by)



Yep - but football is a very special case (national game and all that), and Wimbledon only usually messes up the schedules when it is a ratings-busting home player, or final.



It's less of an issue in the UK than it is elsewhere. Particularly on commercial channels. They don't add more ad breaks to the overrun, so some channels lose revenue.

As an aside, I think I read that the order of voting is specifically chosen (based on past results/allegiances) to keep the result as open as possible for as long as possible.

While it's possible you might have a run-away winner (the winner was decided before the last couple of votes this time around, wasn't it?), it'd be a bit of an insult to imply that the results from countries X, Y, and Z aren't worth airing.

Does the production team get all the results in before the link-ups, or are the 8-10-12s only declared over the live link?

According to this:
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2015/05/24/eurovisions-voting-secret-how-voting-purposefully-rigged-create-drama
The voting order is created after the jury final dress rehearsal - so would be based on the judges' votes "who represent 50% of the final vote". So they could do something similar with my idea (only for if it was overrunning) if they wanted/could and if there weren't problems with it (which is sort of the opposite of their algorithm - by trying to make the required amount time up by trying to make a certain number of final voters votes not affect the winner, and based on the actual full results (Jury+public vote). Though like was said above it may not be practical - at least with Satellite - it might be that it would be easier over IP).
Yes I think so
I said they could quickly show their results (received digitally) - it was only for an option if it was overrunning. Like was said, it may not be the best (and it may not currently be practical), but it was just an option.

Yes they get them all in, it's the EBU/voting partner that gives each broadcaster the points they have to read out.

The voting order is decided after the jury voting from the dress rehearsal of the Grand Final (So the voting order in the dress rehearsal - which is the first of two rehearsals for the spokespeople is not the final order), and the broadcasters who are voting are informed of the actual voting order before the Saturday morning rehearsal, where the spokespeople (or stand ins) and broadasters get a second rehearsal of the voting sequences.

That jury vote gives you 50% of the final vote. However I believe that the semifinal televoting may also be involved in deciding spokesperson order - as that gives you some additional hints about how public voting may go. I believe it is based on an algorithm designed by a Swedish academic.

IP contribution for voting is a good way off. Just doing satellite voting is tricky enough - and that uses widespread standards (DVB-S2) Until there is a well implemented, widespread IP contribution standard I don't see IP taking over any time soon.