So, at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, the UK's entry placed 15th, scoring 111 points. Not as bad as I feared, but also not as good as I expected.
Half the juries gave the UK points, ranging from the 1 point awarded by Austria, Greece and Norway, to the 10 points awarded by Slovenia and the 12 points awarded by Australia.
4 countries awarded points in the televoting. 3 of those countries were not countries that had juries awarding points. Only Australia awarded points in both the jury stage and the televoting stage, but the televoting only brought 3 points, compared to 12 points from the jury. The rest of the points came from Spain (1), Ireland (4) and Malta (4).
99 points from the juries, just 12 points from the televoting.
Now obviously politics, in the form of Brexit, played its part with the public in Europe, but considering the juries rated us so highly, putting us in 10th place overall in terms of jury scores, it makes the televoting look worse. The televoters had us in 20th place, hence why we ended up with mid table mediocrity at 15th.
However, at almost 4 hours long just for the final, the Eurovision Song Contest is proving to be a difficult sell now, especially as in Kiev, where the event was taking place, it was almost 2am when the show finished. The fact that the show starts at 8pm UK time, means its 9pm in most of Western Europe, ecxept Portugal and Ireland, and 10pm in most of Eastren Europe. It's getting too long and unweildly to be just one show.
And indeed it isn't. You have two semi-finals, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and it's been that way since 2004. And in my view, the semi finals are not serving the contest well.
First off, you have the big 5, who get automatic byes straight through to the final. The Big 5 are the biggest monetary contributors to the EBU. The year's host nation also automatically qualifies, and then from however many countries beyond those 6 have submitted entries, they are split into 2 pools, and have to go through a semi final each to qualify. The top 10 from each semi-final get through to the final, leaving you with 26 finalists.
Each semi final though goes on for about 2.5 hours, with somewhere between 15 and 20 songs per semi. It makes the total investment over the whole week about 9 hours. And again, in a place like Kiev, it's past midnight when the shows end.
There has to be a better way to do this, and perhaps there is.
Get rid of the semi-finals, and have all countries competing in a new Eurovision Weekend. It starts on Saturday night with the entries, performing for the juries and the audience. This process is going to be long, but during a Eurovision party, it's really the songs that matter, that's the main thing that brings people together, the music. So, let the music take centre stage, start the event earlier, 7pm UK or 7.30pm UK rather than 8pm, and everyone can have their Eurovision party and enjoy the music.
The juries would then meet up on Sunday morning to award the points for each country, and from after the performers have finished on stage, the lines could then open for televoting. Then, like the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent do, have a Sunday night results programme, where the country representatives can announce the jury points, and their countries televoting points, and then we end up with a winner. So for instance, if one country was awarded 12 points from each of the other 41 country juries, and 12 points from each of the other 41 countries televoting, their final score would be 984 points.
Currently, the juries watch their own performance, untelevised, on Friday night, and they finalise their scores before the live broadcast ever happens. Where as televoters get mere minutes to make up their mind and cast their own vote. Leaving the lines open all through the night, into Sunday and right up until the beginning of the results show, would leave much more time to get the votes in, and you can still have some performances to start the show off well, before the results get announced.
Whilst Saturday night's programme is still likely to be about 4 hours, the new Sunday night programme would be only half that at most, and the combined length is less than the current 9 hour time investment that we are currently asked for.
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