Eurovision 2019

I like how you moved from positive news to a potential problem!

The news is now confirmed by Israeli site i24: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/181761-180814-israeli-entities-reach-deal-to-host-eurovision-contest-report

The jury rehearsal takes place Friday night, 19:00 UTC.

The logical choice of city would be Tel Aviv, where running rehearsals during Shabbat won't be an issue. It's odd that people are so pro-Jerusalem after President Trump decided to recognise that city as the capital. I wouldn't have the average Eurovision fan down as someone who particularly liked the guy, let's put it that way.

Either way, time to hurry up and get on with it. The world will be watching and it's in the best interests of all in Israel to put on a slick production. Furthermore, after two stage invasions in as many years, security needs to step up where it really matters. Stop searching people for ladders and selfie sticks, and target the real troublemakers - make it very clear this year Mossad will be giving them a very long time-out.

I think on both occasions where Israel have hosted, both in Jerusalem at the International Convention Center, they were both also on a Saturday night. Quite interesting reading the wikipedia article about the 1999 contest -


It always seems that at this time of year doubts are raised about the following contest - and they're always proved wrong . It would be an enormous departure from tradition now for a non-winning country to host, as that hasn't happened since 1980 (when, ironically Israel declined to host, after winning for the second year on the trot.)

In 1999 they was only the one final so its possible the rehearsal happened Thursday night or Friday Afternoon.
The Sabbath beings around 7.30pm in May so if the Rehearsal is 10pm UTC that will be during it.

There's a lot more than one rehearsal, even in 1999.

In 1999, the Friday rehearsal was done without an audience as a compromise. I've no idea how it was handled in 1979.

The EBU have made it quite clear what the requirements are, and if they can't accommodate those, tough. It's not that there's always doubts, it's just we've had a couple of winners recently where the political situation has, let's be fair, been a bit shaky.

There are at least three run-throughs of all three shows; the afternoon and evening on the day before TX, then the afternoon of TX. The one the night before is full costume, hair and make-up and runs exactly like the real thing, right down to the script of the hosts.

Apart from being the performance the juries vote on, the dress rehearsal is also used as part of contingency plans; notable uses of this footage include the director having it on standby running in-sync at Riga 2003 incase TaTu did something outrageous, this year of course it was used on the official DVD and YouTube video of the Grand Final in order to cover SuRie's stage invader.

Furthermore, the "Big 5" previews in the semi finals are recorded at the main dress rehearsal. SuRie had a major technical problem with her light tunnel on the Monday night and they were going to re-record it, but eventually gave up and if you watch that recording back (either on YouTube or the clip that made it onto the broadcast) you'll see a couple of the lights don't work. Bumping into Christer Bjorkman himself in Burger King of all places later on that night (I'm not making this up) he explained someone working with the set had manage to dislodge an electrical connector.

I can't imagine the lack of audience compromise being that acceptable to those who don't want it on Friday night - while staff to deal with the audiences wont have to work all the Israeli production staff including the Presenters will have to.
Plus Acts won't like it because for some songs no audience would change the atmosphere which the judges will see the song in - especially as half the judges will have seen it with an audience if its not the a big five

No, it'll be different this time. In 1999 it was 100% televote save for a few less well developed countries that still fielded a jury instead, so Friday night wasn't a competitive performance and ergo could be done as a "closed" run.

There's also the huge revenue generation missed out on not opening up a rehearsal, competitive or not. Tel Aviv is simply a no brainer.

I'm not sure if I should be reading anything into this but two well-known production people have been spotted in Tel Aviv...



Great news if a) it is, indeed, Tel Aviv and b) Ola and his team are back - very capable pair of hands to man the ship, as we've seen the last few years.

All national broadcasters are expected to record the dress rehearsal of the final and run it 'in sync' in their transmission control room as a backup in case the live feeds from the contest disappear.


This also used to be the case for the semi-finals, but now the live dress rehearsals of the semifinals aren't 'clean' because of the Big5+Host performances, an edited version is fed to all broadcasters the following morning.

Presumably the dress rehearsal tx, is running on a server in the broadcast compound alongside the live Saturday Tx?

Which begs the question - why didn't the didn't the director of this year's contest crash to the back-up when the protestor got on stage during the UK performance, stayed with the vt until song end?