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Newsletter: The Televoting Fallout Written by on June 8, 2015 | 3 Comments

Now in its fortnightly cycle, welcome to the latest edition of the thankfully more relaxed ESC Insight newsletter. In this edition we will be going through the latest news that comes out of the shrinking Eurovision bubble as we enter the delights of the summer months. Read the latest edition here.

That does mean though we have news, and even a song, from the upcoming Junior Eurovision competition in Bulgaria, as well as reports on the hectic lifestyle of our winning act and from Sweden itself as the cities go bid crazy to hold Eurovision in 2016. Our regular newsletter column, Robertson’s Reflection, let’s Newsletter Editor Ben give his take on the biggest fallout from the post-Contest melee, that of Italy winning the televote but not winning overall.

Granted though it was on the cards before, Måns was the top student with international juries in Melodifestivalen, and the Sanremo juries gave Il Volo quite a kicking before televoting saved their bacon. There is something with the Italian package that is just a little too cliche, and the Swedish number is just the right side of familiar to perhaps cause this break from the juries. What is of note here though is is that Italy’s jury position, a respectable 6th, still had some noteworthy negative scores. Whereas no jury member this year had Sweden in their bottom six, a considerable number gave Italy stunningly low scores for a song which dominated the airplay pre-competition just in adoration from the Italian public. Icelandic media in particular have picked on the dramatic split in their jury, with three members placing Italy in the top five, and two others in the bottom seven, dragging down the jury ranking to 11th. Iceland gave their televoting douze points to the Italians, but in combination this still meant Sweden was unstoppable to get the douze points.

More than the fact the juries and televoters disagreed on the winner, it is this kill factor our full ranking system has which is attracting the brunt of the backlash. Veteran Eurovision composer Zeljko Joksimovic has also spoken out about this, saying it ‘makes us question the purpose and essence of the Contest’. An esteemed and respected figure of modern Eurovision folklore, for Zeljko to speak out speaks of a concern, especially when he’s discussing his homeland nation of Serbia not about his Montenegrin composition this year. He’s completely right too, it means the competition for jury votes, to avoid being hated and voted down, is as important as creating something that people love and vote for, and those two things are in some regard mutually exclusive in the minds of a composer.

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About The Author: Ben Robertson

Ben Robertson has attended 23 National Finals in the world of Eurovision. With that experience behind him he writes for ESC Insight with his analysis and opinions about anything and everything Eurovision Song Contest that is worth telling.

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3 responses to “Newsletter: The Televoting Fallout”

  1. Moshe Melman says:

    Also take into consideration the fact that Italy won the Junior eurovision 2014 but she is not hosting the contest this year, a factor that can be influence on people/jury in their votings.

    Second thing Italy is singing same issues in Junior and in the Eurovision itself. Grande Amore , Maybe people got fed up that the same topic is returning all the time. for example IBA in Israel understand that people are not happy that Israel songs were about Peace & Love. In recent years other topics engage the Israeli songs. Maybe Italy should yake an example from Israel

  2. HarrietKrohn says:

    I highly doubt that for example the German jury members even know that something called Junior Eurovision Song Contest exists. Only a handful of countries participate (Germany never has), and only the most die hard fans care very much about the kiddie contest. So I honestly doubt that resulsts and songs from the JESC played a decisive role in the jury voting.

  3. John Egan says:

    Congratulations getting elected to the OGAE board Ben! Great news!

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