It’s the end of the Eurovision fortnight, and time for us to pack our bags as the ESC Insight team scatter around the world, as does everyone else. Even with the headaches of the after-parties and lots of travelling, there’s still blogging, news and stories around Eurovision.
What’s been happening from others perspectives? Let’s find out as we point out some of the best (and we try to decide if this is going to be a regular feature in the off-season).
Here’s what the world had to say about Eurovision on Sunday!
How Azerbaijan won Eurovision
Fotis Konstantopoulos over on Oikotimes lays out some thoughts on the victory of Ell/Nikki at last night’s Eurovision Song Contest, and also looks at some of the more prominent countries. It’s a nice brush stroke which adds in some finer details, even if we’re likely to see more pouring over the stats for in next few weeks.
Fotis’ initial thoughts are here.
A bit of fun with the scoreboard
ESC Daily have pulled out some of the bits of trivia we all forgot to note down for the long flight home (to be honest most of us tried to catch up on some sleep). If the Wooden Spoon statistics, Big Five comparisons and a look at the Top Ten is what you need, then say thanks to Victor Hondal.
The points from the Semi-Final
While we’ll have to wait for the official audits to go through, the points totals (jury and public vote combined) for the two semi-finals have been posted by the official Eurovision.tv site. Malta missed out by one point, while Poland and The Netherlands were left at the foot of the score tables on Tuesday and Thursday respectively.
Twelve names for 2012 already pencilled in
That didn’t take long. Joining Azerbaijan on the entrants list for the 2012 Song Contest are Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Estonia, The Netherlands and one of this year’s returning countries, Austria. While there’s nothing official, the report at ESC Daily indicates France, Hungary, Italy and San Marino have indicated a likelihood to return, but as yet there’s nothing official.
The Ex-Commentator’s Commentators View
Finally for today, Paddy O’Connell (you know, that bloke we had on our chat show on Friday) takes a look behind the scenes of a Eurovision Commentator.
Allow me to be the first to congratulate the winner of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaj (whatever it is spelled): Turkey!
You mean Sweden? A song written by a Swede, with Swedish styling, with Swedish backing dancers… Stockholm 2012? 🙂
Well, to be honest we don’t know yet who is writing Azeri’s song for 2012. But, in any event, Turkey will win. I’ll bet a Guinness, or whatever your local tipple would be.
The Swedes are certainly taking over Eurovision. The last 3 irish entries have been part composed by Swedes. Given thte strenght of their National Final they could conceivably win in the next 5/6 years. Timoteij or Le Kid could possibly do it for them with a good visual performance, which is where seem to have lacked in the last number of years.
I was incredulous when I saw Romania and Moldova were allowed to be in the same final. Their guaranteed exchange of 12 points was always going to have repercussions and it was Belgium who suffered. Witloof Bay will have lost out financially in download revenue and work offers that may have occurred from the much greater exposure of singing in the final. The EBU should apologise and guarantee Romania and Moldova will be kept apart from now on.
Perhaps you are overlooking the fact that Belgium got 14 of its 53 points from Romania and Moldova, so only specific manipulations could have favoured Belgium over Bulgaria.
Had they submitted a song with decent lyrics and a strong melody instead of a vocal demo, they might have gained broader and more robust support.
It think the pots system was designed to be diplomatic. And since friendly trios are never split completely, it would be a little unfair if friendly couples always were.