Congrats if you guessed the graphic below
was about Eurovision voting. It comes from some academic work published last year which examined the dynamics of Eurovision voting. We're going to be talking about it tonight. Want to read ?
Oh and we've received this news release from Richard Younger-Ross MP:
"Amidst the celebrations of the Serbian victory in Helsinki on Saturday night, the failure of the UK to get more than 19 votes, placing it second to bottom above Ireland, has prompted Devon MP Richard Younger-Ross to question the voting system for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Said Mr Younger-Ross, 鈥淲hilst I congratulate Serbia on its success, it is interesting to note that every part of the former federation of Yugoslavia gave Serbia maximum votes and in fact four out of the top five countries were east European or Balkan. Certainly the appearance of block voting makes the outcome more predictable now the contest has been opened up to the people and the old panel voting abandoned.鈥
Today Mr Younger-Ross has tabled an EDM calling on the 大象传媒 to insist on changes to the voting system or to withdraw from the contest.
EDM: "This House believes that voting in the Eurovision song contest has become a joke as countries vote largely on narrow nationalistic grounds or for neighbouring countries rather than the quality of the song; that such narrow nationalistic voting is harmful to the relationship between the peoples of Europe and calls for the 大象传媒 to insist on changes to the voting system or to withdraw from the contest.鈥"
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Eddie.....wot u playin at man?
......I bin dun spen da hole weekend 'voidin it and now u do this..whots up with u man....init
It's good to know that our world is so well managed that our parliamentarians can turn their backs on war, famine and crime to debate the voting system for a television programme.
I look forward to hearing Gordon Brown's views on the topic: it will be a critical part of his campaign to head his party and the country.
Unbelievable....and there I was just thinking it was a wate of my license fee, but apparently my taxes can be wasted on it too....
I have to say - I thoroughly enjoyed Eurovision - though largely due to Terry Wogan's commentary on 大象传媒1. The addition of the text messages scrolling across the screen added a little je ne sais qua...
Ye the voting system needs to be totally reworked. Italy voted with their feet and have not entered the competition for ten years - A great shame as RAI (the state broadcaster) are probably the best there is when it comes to hosting such an event.
Eurovision Contest ! - I thought that it had been put to sleep about 50 years ago. Or perhaps that was a good dream.
Sorry, but I will not bother to listen to PM tonight.
WW I agree with you.
WW I agree with you.
Eddie,
Never mind all that, are you going to play the John (大象传媒) Sweeney interview that's doing the rounds? Go on.
Hmm, the mods are being heavy handed again. Or was it because Eddie appears to have edited his entry?
No newsletter....now i've been 502ed....oh dear.... ;o(
Re; Vyle and WW :-
Does this mean that nearly 11 million 大象传媒 1 viewers and an unspecified number of 大象传媒 Radio two listeners were just curious on Saturday evening or enjoying Eurovision then?
?
Is there dastardly censorship going on?
They think they can slip that past the froggers? Pah.
re Eurovision, I did like the R4 trail that said words to the effect of:
"And if you'd like a reason to continue listening to Radio 4 tonight, well, it's the Eurovision Song Contest!
On television."
I do like being reminded why I love R4 (most of the time)
I had the ESC on for background news whilst I was trying to write my OU assignment. At about 9.15 I was struck by the horrific thought that I'd decided the Latvian one "wasn't all that bad."
At this point I realised that my brain had turned to mush and decided to revive it with alcohol.
Terry was spectacular. The funniest moment was reading the English translation for the German entry. In another Euro-state there would have been their version of Terry commenting that the Brits have really lost the plot.
With regards to local voting - I guess you vote for something that is culturally similar to your own land. Probably why Ireland and UK did so badly.
I think Mr Younger-Ross has lost the plot. Of course the Eurovision Song Contest is a joke -- any way you look at it -- isn't that the point?
(Brace yourself: Fifi's about to get shouty.)
WHO THE [expletive deleted] CARES!!!!!?
(OK you can come out now. She's gone.)
Fifi ;o)
Feefs (15)
YOU'LL care when someone puts a thumping electro-disco beat to the Froggers' song, gets a transvestite to sing it in a "high energy" way with over the top staging and enters it for one of the Balkan states.
Especially if bloc voting means it wins!
I actually saw most of the songs this year 鈥 but missed the best part, the voting (and didn鈥檛 set the DVD-R properly so couldn鈥檛 even watch it later!) I鈥檓 shocked that Serbia won 鈥 the song really was atrocious. OK singing in Serbian is probably not to our ears, but this was awful. If the Balkans had to vote for each other, they could at least have voted for the Macedonia entry 鈥 beautiful girl with a sweet song (even Terry restrained himself from referring to the Serb 鈥榣ady鈥檚鈥 appearance). And what was that ridiculous Ukrainian effort? I quite liked our song 鈥 it鈥檚 the best for years, but if nobody likes us in Europe, even Paul McCartney would struggle! And the other song I quite liked was the Irish song 鈥 a traditional folk song. But it was totally unsuitable for a large stage at Eurovision. However the only song I鈥檇 actually like to see again was the Russian one :o)
I don鈥檛 see people get so bothered about the voting though. These countries were at war with each other only ten years ago 鈥 surely this is progress! Ireland rarely used to vote for the UK entry, but even they seem to have started voting us for in recent years 鈥 possibly due to the peace process?
However, if you want to reform the comp, I have some suggestions. To avoid this similar annual vote for neighbouring countries, how about barring a country awarding the top marks to another the following year. Thus, if UK gives its top votes to Sweden (12), Russia (11) and Greece (10), we could not vote for any of those countries next year.
On the other hand, we could do like we do with football, and enter each of the home nations (in fact the Beeb refers to them all as countries now) separately. This might increase our chances.
Why don't we submit a Lying Scotsman track for next year's contest? :D
Better still, submit the Frogger's Song (although the six performer limit might prove problematic).
We probably wouldn't do any better, but we'd all enjoy it a lot more :) Anyone fancy an all expenses paid trip to Belgrade next May?
-oOo-
Under Eurovision rules, the top 10 entries from this year's contest automatically qualify for the following year's finals, plus the big donors. So the 14 countries with guaranteed places in the Belgrade final are:
Serbia
Ukraine
Russia
Turkey
Bulgaria
Belarus
Greece
Armenia
Hungary
Moldova
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Spain
So its the ex-Soviet and Balkan blocs that are the current favourites - perhaps we should dispatch reporters to those countries early next year to find out what styles of music are popular over there, then produce something similar for our entry. The problem being, that unless all entries for a Song for Europe follow the same strategy, the public will inevitably go for either the cheesiest song or the most photogenic group, regardless of the song quality. Perhaps what's needed is to get a jury of 'experts' to slate the song with the most chance of winning, so the public vote for it out of sympathy (c.f. Julian Clary on Strictly Come Dancing, Huey on The Underdog Show).
Alternatively we could find a transvestite to do the honours, get the audio equivalent of Damien Hurst (i.e. someone likely to dig up plenty of controversy), or hire a combination of the Chuckle Brothers and Timmy Mallet (i.e. ludicrously silly). All the international publicity given to Ukraine's foil-clad tranny (IIRC including a certain E Mair on a well-known blog) didn't do them any harm...
So how come GB doesn't have any pals?
Oh come on now, sacrebleu (19) Gordon Brown has loads of pals at the moment. In fact everyone wants to be his friend for the next few weeks!
Could it also be that the UK's position beside a much loathed neo-con American President in the global political playground, specifically over the invasion has Iraq, has considerably dimmed how other nations perceive us. Households throughout Europe are probably saying, "I do like the melody in 'Flying the flag' but we can't vote for the UK." We are left to play on the swings on our own. Maybe we can join a pan-American contest. Surely this is part of Blair's legacy ?!?
Jonnie (11)
Re:-
Does this mean that nearly 11 million 大象传媒 1 viewers and an unspecified number of 大象传媒 Radio two listeners were just curious on Saturday evening or enjoying Eurovision then?
- No, it just means most of them were writing OU assignments or doing other worthwhile activities; some of them found it was the least crummy programme available at the time; a few thoroughly enjoyed it, but a reference to "Seeing" a song might give a clue. My attitude to certain pop songs used to be very different from my classmates'. I put it down to the fact that we had no TV.
Deary me, we obviously haven't read enough copies of the Daily Wail between us.
Surly if we get some of these immigrants who are supposedly flooding our country to put together a band then run with it it will get the eastern bloc vote.
On a more serious note, it would be interesting to see if the voting and immigration distribution do bare any resemblance of similarities. The germanys results, from this year, do bear some similarity to the "nationality" of those living within it.
Or we could just stop submitting crummy songs. Seriously this year was dire and Terrys once amusing comments sound like he is trying to justify the injustifyable really when wondering why we didn't get any votes.
Regards
John
Re: Vyle -
Oh Lordy - what with the Reverend on AA and Eurovision in the evening, our viewing and listening clearly didn't match up :-()
Surely no one would have been doing an OU assignment on a Saturday night though? What ever happened to the weekend!
Well let's say I doubted that Eurovision *would* have gone down well with a mainstream 大象传媒 Radio 4 audience. I should have left my comment on a Radio 2 blog I suspect?
Trust me Jonnie, if I'd been organised my OU assignment would have been posted by Saturday! It's still not finished and it's due in by the 22nd.
I normally avoid the ESC but needed random noise to be able to study. You don't get much more random than Eurovision.
However it is a little like seeing a car crash. You know you should be concentrating on what you are supposed to be doing but...
I can say that the votting was not faire.
I voted for Romania, and as everyone can see , Romania got 0 votes from GB.How come????They took my money 55p/min or how much was it , but they have not gave my vote.Im damn angry with them!!!!Dont get me wrong, i did not liked the Romanian song was really crap, but as is my country i vote it, and what really desepointe me is that the have not recorded my vote.