Welcome to this week’s latest installment of the ESC Insight Newsletter. Each week the Newsletter reviews the latest Eurovision news and gives comments and as to what is happening in the world of the Eurovision Song Contest. The latest edition is available to read on this link.
This week we are looking at the results of the running order for the Semi Finals as well as looking forward to the fun of Eurovision’s Greatest Hits this week. In the weekly column we have Newsletter Editor Ben Robertson look at the running order in frustration at it being producer-led again. He argues that a fairer and still as exciting solution would be to go back to a draw, with a difference.
Back in 2008 they allowed the first few countries that were drawn out to select their running order position in each show. Barring naive Azerbaijan in their first attempt picking their lucky number, people generally picked the later positions. However imagine what would happen if every country had to individually select their placing. Imagine the drama as Sweden, the heavy favourites are pulled out and Christer Björkman confidently selects number 13. There are two slots left, number 14, directly after Sweden, or number 3 after little-fancied San Marino, and you are called up to select your starting position. Where do you go? Is later simply best, or do you start to think about the songs around you? Do you start to consider the kind of songs around you and how well fancied they are or if they are in similar or different styles?
This is not only exciting and requires your Head of Delegation to really know their running order systems, it probably makes for that spectacle of a TV show as well. Although we would argue you want to be near those songs similar to you but or a worse standard for you to shine, in general the perception is that you want to be around contrasting songs so that your entry stands out. This would more likely than not create the mixed up running order that EBU wanted, without making the host broadcaster responsible for proposing anybody to get a ‘kiss of death’ position.
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The main difficulty I see with your “draw” idea is what you are implicitly saying to other performers. It’s notable that the EBU doesn’t require producers to explain the running order.
Generally, I far as I know, the delegations don’t want to be in the position of either denigrating other acts or identifying rivals and threats.
I’ve considered systems giving delegations limited input about things like proximity to others (similar messaging issues), lateness etc*, which are then collated by an order-independent, deterministic, and public algorithm.
[* various abstract relationships]
The outcome would be unpredictable, but equally determined by all delegations, and ideally preserving some competitive wisdom.
It’s a game of course; but without turn-order probably wouldn’t make good TV. (Well, you could sequence inputs etc. as with voting I suppose.)