Eurovision 2019

That might be to promote it but also a little dig a against the restructure, budget cuts and disputes over paying for this year with the government.

Am I the only one not getting the love for Australia? I think it's a bloody awful song - easily their worst entry so far.

I didn’t get the love for it during the Australian selection programme Brekkie but it has become a favourite of mine through repeated listen, the performance cemented that.

In fact I can see the UK being bottom - his vocals were atrocious in the clip and not sure technical problems were the cause.
Last place would be sad through - it would really feed into a toxic narrative that the rest of Europe hates the UK (A narrative I have heard from several family members when talking about Eurovison.)

Will the BBC continue to fund a large chunk of the EBU budget? We are hated by all of Europe, why do we bother providing millions to the EBU and then be treated like crap?

It's the right time of the year - what a load of tommyrot!

Because, as is pointed out every year, this song contest is only a small part of what the BBC gets out of Eurovision and, as three and a half hours of Saturday night prime time goes, it’s cheap telly.

What does the BBC get out of funding the large chunk of the EBU budget? Sorry, I am not that clued up on the EBU.

Eurovision Song Contest 2019 Second Semi-Final Results
Here are the results, which were announced in a random order at 22:04 BST. Any use of "tonight" still means Thursday 16 May 2019.

My desired qualifiers: Switzerland , Sweden , Croatia, Malta , Russia , Albania , Norway , The Netherlands ; plus two (and no more!) of Denmark , Austria, Lithuania, North Macedonia , Azerbaijan .

Actual qualifiers (in order of announcement): North Macedonia , The Netherlands , Albania , Sweden , Russia , Azerbaijan , Denmark , Norway , Switzerland , Malta .

Bold entries represent the actual qualifiers that match my "Definitely want to qualify" preferences, and italic entries represent the ones that match my "Wouldn't mind qualifying" preferences.

OUT: Armenia, Austria, Croatia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Romania.

My comments about which countries qualified, and which didn't, are available here:
https://nemesis-nick.blogspot.com/2019/05/eurovision-song-contest-2019-second.html#ESC2019_SF2_results

A lot of content sharing with other European broadcasters, a lot of coverage of live news events will come through Eurovision. Plus the usual sharing of best practice that comes through this type of industry body and Tony Hall also gets to call himself president of Eurovision.

We'd never have guessed.