My favorites got clobbered yesterday and only six of my ten made it to Final on Saturday. The scores are not out yet (they are released AFTER the winner is declared, so as to not taint voting patterns for the Final), but I suspect there was a LOT of regional and political voting going on this year. That said, here are the batch of countries that have moved on (my guesses in bold), in the order they were announced during the Second Semi Final:
- Hungary
- Azerbaijan
- Georgia
- Romania
- Norway
- Iceland
- Armenia
- Finland
- Malta
- Greece
I think the sense of humor the Greek participants displayed at the press conference following the announcement of the Finalists just about nailed the voting in the head: "Maybe people were drunk when they voted for us." I'm going to take the liberty of applying this as the reasoning behind some of the countries qualifying for the Final, while I recover from the disappearance of Israel and San Marino into an abyss they did not deserve this year. Macedonia (FYR of) not making it into the Final means that there is not one single ex-Yugoslav country in the Final this year, for the first time in more than two decades (Bosnia-Herzegovina withdrew and Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia all fell during the First Semi Final). On a side note: I sincerely hope that Israel's lead singer Moran Mazor was still able to celebrate her 22nd birthday in style in Malmo (Happy Birthday Moran...and don't worry girl. With a voice like yours, you've got a very promising career ahead of you, unlike some of the clowns who made it to the Final). Which brings me to...
How the Voting Works (or a History of Voting and selection process at Eurovision)
You may be wondering the logistics behind picking the countries who will compete in the Final. When the Contest started, the point system was not clear (and only the winner was announced, with everyone else being declared in joint 2nd place). Then various voting schemes followed, ending up with the current one in use (it kind of stuck and became the standard). Before the fall of the Iron Wall (and the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union), it was all much easier. Public broadcasters from new countries applied for membership in the European Broadcasting Union, paid their dues once they were approved, announced they would be participating in the upcoming Contest, picked a jury to evaluate the songs from other nations, and then sent their chosen performance. Once all the songs were presented, those juries (usually made up of music professionals) delivered the points for their top ten songs: One point for 10th, two for 9th, all the way up to 8 points for 3rd place. Then the second place song got 10 points and the favorite song from each country received the coveted douze points (of course, there was still no voting for your own country). The results were tabulated, and a winner was declared as the entry with the most points.
Then tie breaks happened. The participant country lists expanded to the point of making a three hour show impossible. Some countries started crying foul that the national juries from certain Western countries didn't understand their music and only supported artists that fit their own musical standards. Language restrictions were challenged on the basis that they provided certain countries advantages. The Contest carried on, first announcing a pre-qualification system tabulated from placement and points in recent contests (this system was a major fail at achieving its purpose of fairness). Complaints from fans, public broadcasters and artists flooded the EBU. The Contest evolved. The Big Four were established to ensure that the highest dues paying members of the EBU would be guaranteed a spot in the Final [this has now become the Big Five after Italy's return in 2011, and includes Spain, Germany, France and Spain as well.] The Top Ten in each year's Contest would join the Big Four and the winner in the Final the following year, with ten additional entries qualifying through a Semi Final (established for the 2004 Istanbul Contest). The imperfect system chugged along, eventually leading to the system in place now: Big Five members and the host country automatically advance to the Final, and ten countries from each Semi Final (twenty total) join these six to duke it out for the win.
On the voting front, some countries implemented systems that allowed the public votes to determine the winner (and coincidentally became a huge revenue source for those countries' public broadcasters). All participants soon joined the tele-voting bandwagon, and the Contest began churning out unexpected winners, who beat out great songs from favored countries (a la Belgium's Kate Ryan not making it through the Semi Final in Athens in 2006 and the Finnish orcs in the form of Lordi won with Hard Rock Hallelujah). Then Western European countries began to complain that those competing in the Semi Finals could not overcome the obstacle of block voting. The most prominent of these are the Balkan, ex-Soviet and Scandinavian/Nordic voting blocks (exchanging top three votes amongst themselves, virtually ensuring that the winner would come amongst their block); and the more minor, but in no way insignificant, are the one-on-one douze points exchanges between certain neighbors (or political allies). To curb this trend, the EBU brought back the juries full-time (they were kept as a back-up system in case tele-voting irregularities or problems prevented any country from tabulating a certain result). The tele-voting is now mixed with the jury votes to (each count for half) and give each country its votes to distribute to its fellow competitors.
Get that? Yeah, I'm still confused too. Just remember this: 26 countries compete on equal footing on Saturday in the Final. Points will be distributed by 39 participants (1-12 points) and we will have a winner, who will then take over hosting duties for next year's Contest.
No comments:
Post a Comment