Eurovision 2016

You can see the CuePilot burned in shot number in that video. Makes it very easy for the delegations to pin point shots that they think could be improved.

I'm not sure the UK entry was best directed for their live performance . . . they could have done better with the facilities available, such as having a 'crowd' or 'crowd imagery' behind them.



There were better PR videos beforehand which included such.

It was a good 'Eurovision' song - cheesy and populist. We've won on such songs before. Such a shame for the lads, as that was probably the best we've put forward for years.

In a similar vein of thought. When you listen to the lyrics it talks about how "we're in this together" something that could or have led to a performance where the duo sing it to each other, I'm not saying that Joe & Jake should have gone down that line but I'm sure if it was a male and female duo that we sent that the performance would have been staged differently.

It was but it just wasn't good enough against probably the strongest competition in years. To pick up points you need to be a top ten song and this just wasn't quite there. It certainly wasn't the third worst song but when juries and viewers are choosing the top 10 it doesn't matter too much whether you fall 11th or last in the vote. Be interesting to see actually if the song did any better if the full rankings were taken into account.


Also the idea of a "good Eurovision song" needs to be consigned to history now. It's good songs that are needed to win, not good Eurovision songs.

It certainly did not deserve to get the same position on the scoreboard as Electro Velvet (although J&J had far more points than them).

But Brekkie is right, the nature of the beast is that people only vote for their absolute favourite song, and if You're Not Alone was everyone's second favourite, it would come last.

Yes - though with the new voting system you have to halve the new score to compare it to the 2015 and earlier scores (and also consider the number of votes available as more countries = more votes) - as every country now gives twice as many votes (Jury have 1-8/10/12 and Public have 1-8/10/12)

That said - the UK still did a lot better as we got 5 in 2015 and 62 in 2016 - which either compares 5 to 31 or 10 to 62 if halve this year or double last year.

Total number of votes each country had pre-2015 was : 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+10+12 = 58
That is now doubled to 116.

Put it another way - a really good song could now get 2x12 points from a country - 12 from the jury and 12 from the public. Previously you could only get a single 12.

I guess the best way of comparing performance is to divide the points you received by the total number of 12 points available to that country (which would be 12 or 24 by the number of countries minus 1 - as you can't vote for yourself) which is the highest score a country could get?

That would let you measure success on a more absolute scale - allowing comparison between years other than by ranking?

Looking at the UK last year and this vs the winner last year and this :

UK 2015 = 5 points = 1% of highest possible score (40 countries - 39 x 12 points available)
UK 2016 = 62 points = 6.3% of the highest possible score (42 countries - 41 x 2 x 12 points available)

Sweden 2015 = 365 points = 78% of the highest possible score (39x12 points avail)
Ukraine 2016 = 534 points = 54% of the highest possible score (41x24 points avail)

This is precisely it - if you aren't in the Top 10 ranking for jury or public in any given country (i.e. don't get a 1-8/10/12) it doesn't matter whether you were 11th or 26th - the result is 0 points from that jury or public. You have to be Top 10 or better to get votes. That's the tough reality.

Yes. There is lots of low level granular detail that makes this stuff interesting in stats terms.



Yes. The problem the UK has is that it still associates Eurovision with a 70s 'Boom Bang a Bang' 'La la la la la' kind of music. The reality in the modern era is that songs like that get nowhere. Look at the winners over the last 10 years or so. None of them have been 'stereotypical Eurovision songs'. They've been distinctive (within the contest at least) and memorably performed and/or staged. Personally I think Australia probably should have won this year (They would have if we'd used last year's voting system) - and they'd have won deservedly. I'm not saying I wish Ukraine hadn't won though - as I'm pleased they did.

Done the maths (ranked based on 1 point for 1st, 25/26 for last) and it doesn't make too much difference to the UK - up a couple of places. Does change the winner though, while Spain jump from 22nd to 15th.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y163/brekkieboy2001/eurooverall.png

Does just show though how when all these shows say they'll combine viewers and judges votes 50/50 without ever really explaining how that different systems can give quite different results.

Spain should have done a lot better - great song and performance. It's the song I've had in my head since.

Spain for me was the big underperformer of the night, I saw an easy top ten for them and was pretty astonished when they ranked *that* low. The image above makes sense - it would have got some points, but it just wasn't enough people's favourite to do mega well.

The Netherlands was another one I assumed would be higher but they at least were 11th.

Think the BBC took quite a lot of effort to explain it - both in commentary and by pointing people to the Richard Osman video explainer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03txnhh

They were clear to say you vote in the same way, but didn't say that the system hadn't changed.

There had already been two different ways of combing Jury and Televotes since the juries were reintroduced. Originally it was a dual 1-8/10/12 - with the two 1-8/10/12 added together and then ranked to deliver a single 1-8/10/12, then it went to combined ranking instead. (So Juries ranked songs 1-26, Public voting ranked 1-26, add the two together and then allocate the 10 different points to the top 10 ranked songs)

Surely there must be a way of using an algorithm to even out the population differences between countries in the voting system?

Serbia, Croatia, Latvia et al get the same voting effects as the UK, Germany and France, despite having far fewer numbers of people voting.

It's rather like the EU system of democracy, where a country like Luxembourg has the same veto rights as the UK, despite having a population the size of Sheffield.