Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Moscow 09 in Review: The Voting

There has been no talk of bloc voting this year. Given the size of Norway's victory and the consistency of it's voting-earning from all nations (everyone gave him points and apart from Turkey, Portugal and sections of Eastern Europe just about everyone had him in their top three) it is fair enough to say that everyone agrees the right person won.

Some of the old biases were in evidence - Cyprus giving 12 points to Greece, Andorra giving 12 to Spain - but generally we saw a return to votes being earned by good performances and publicity efforts. The UK scored its best result in seven years after Jade Ewen completed a 13 nation tour appearing on talk shows and variety shows across Europe - oh, and singing very, very well on the night.

After a closer contest (perhaps Oslo in 2010) we may be able to verify if the return of juries has finally slayed the Neighbourhood Watch scheme which has undermined several contests. One concern we have is that the juries make their scores after watching the dress rehearsal on the Friday night! This does seem very wrong - if a performer misses a note or has a sore throat on Friday, but nails it on Saturday at the Final, they will get marked down on 50% of their score for a sin committed off-camera.

Is it asking too much for the juries to watch the Final and make up their minds during the 15 minute interval? Like the rest of us.

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