Eurovision Song Contest 2011

By | May 14, 2011

Wooh yeah! I’m so excited about this.

Join Graham Norton at 8pm on BBC1 for the Eurovision Song Contest live from Dusseldorf (or if you prefer Ken Bruce on Radio 2). 25 countries are competing in the grand final, including Ireland with Jedward’s Lipstick (which as song number 6 behind other upbeat numbers from Sweden and Estonia is a really bad draw for them) and the UK’s Blue with I Can who will be the 14th to sing. Hit the red button for singalong lyrics!

This year promises dynamic voting to make things as exciting as possible (although it’s based on the national juries votes taken from yesterday’s dress rehersal, so it may not work all that brilliantly in practice) and in a first, electronic voting from the Bother’s Bar venue of choice (i.e. an iPad with Numbers) so I might be chipping in with some stuff if I can get the wi-fi connected. It’s all VERY EXCITING.

You can see the running order and download a scorecard from the BBC here.

115 thoughts on “Eurovision Song Contest 2011

  1. Des Elmes

    France not doing as well as expected, though – but the Greeks like them enough to give them 12…

    Reply
  2. Des Elmes

    Another 12 for Bosnia… think they’ve got the most 12s thus far.

    Meanwhile Jedward appear to be falling out of contention…

    Reply
  3. Des Elmes

    Unsurprisingly, Romania gives 12 to the Moldovan hats – puttting them level with the Grimes…

    Reply
  4. art begotti

    Well, it looks like all my picks are out of the running. Unless if there’s some crazy last-second turnaround.

    Reply
  5. Des Elmes

    Marty Whelan saying Jedward just can’t win it at this stage… stating the obvious.

    Reply
  6. David B

    Seems like the adaptive voting is working very well.

    Not surprised the UK vote didn’t hold up – I was sure we shouldn’t have been 2nd favourite. Interesting the bookies have got it so wrong.

    Reply
  7. Des Elmes

    That’s it – we’re heading to Baku next year…

    You must be pretty disappointed Alex. 😉

    Reply
    1. Dave

      About 8/1 just before the competition and about 14/1 last week. They were 3rd favourites before the show after France and Ireland.

      Reply
      1. Des Elmes

        They did become favourites about an hour before the results came in, though… 😉

        Reply
    2. Dave

      The best bets were each-way on Italy or Ukraine – around 200/1 to win before the contest.

      Reply
  8. CeleTheRef

    the vote reveal was one of the most exciting things I’ve seen on TV since jeux sans frontieres. hope Italy joins next year too.

    Reply
      1. Jennifer Turner

        True, there wouldn’t have been much point in watching the voting this year anyway, even if I could have stood the sound effects. Which makes me think I probably won’t bother with it at all next year.

        Reply
  9. Des Elmes

    So Italy finish second despite the long odds with ‘brokes, WH and PP…

    You must be pretty happy about that CeleTheRef. 😉

    Followed by Sweden, Ukraine and the sand dancer, Denmark, Bosnia despite all those 12s, early pacesetters Greece, and then Jedward…

    Lena could only prop up the top 10, which was a bit disappointing, but she did finish one place ahead of Blue.

    Short odds definitely meant nothing for France, though – or for Austria and Hungary…

    Reply
  10. Brig Bother Post author

    Incidentally, Bother’s Party top five were Ireland, UK, Germany, Slovenia, Russia our top five. Azerbaijan second from bottom!

    Reply
  11. Jennifer Turner

    Having abandoned the broadcast early in the voting, I find that the winning song is one I couldn’t even remember and had look up online. Er… yeah. Nothing special, is it? I’ll have forgotten it again by the morning.

    Reply
  12. Des Elmes

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people on Twitter aren’t too happy about the result – with quite a few saying Azerbaijan is in Asia and not Europe…

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      The same was said when Israel won it in Brum in 1998. Everyone was saying they’re in Asia.

      Reply
    2. Brig Bother Post author

      Yes, every yesr you get people ask about countries not in Europe despite the fact the EBU has been around a long time now.

      Reply
  13. Greg (not S)

    The swiss entry may have gotten 12 from the UK if you could get through to vote for it, tried 6 times before i got through.

    Can’t believe it did so bad as along with Spain it was the only song i liked.

    Reply
    1. Jennifer Turner

      Spain, I do remember. In particular, I remember wondering what the lethal dose of saccharin is.

      Reply
    2. Andrew Warren

      The Swiss entry was my favourite by far, only Iceland came anywhere close for me. But I think that’s more a sign that Eurovision is Not For Me than anything..

      Reply
  14. sphil

    very interesting, greece beat azerbaijan in the semis. yes greece. that song.

    but im glad one of my tips came to fruition.

    Reply
  15. Alex Davis

    Hey all. I don’t fully understand the relevance of Eurovision and I don’t have the time to learn it all. I do want to write about it a bit though. I’d love to have someone write something about it for Buzzer. I promise about 600K viewers a month for what you write and possible continuation of writing. If interested email me at alexdavis@buzzerblog.com. Thanks. Sorry to hijack the thread.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Seriously Alex, ‘acquire’ a copy of tonights, give yourself three and a half hours and just watch it. I’d be fascinated to see what you thought!

      Reply
  16. Mart with a Y not a I

    Hmm. Are there around 20,000 hotel rooms in Baku for next years running of the ESC?

    Also, neighbourly voting back with a vengance last night. Despite the dynamic voting (which I noted Mr Norton didn’t mention once..) there were more outbreaks of it than last year when the 50/50 national jury-televoting was brought back.
    Again, this needs to be stopped.

    When the crowd in the arena start repeatedly booing loudly at the shameless mugging of the national points presenter annoucing “our 12 points go to our great friends and neighbours ….” the EBU need to notice.
    I have a trio of ideas..

    a) If the 12 would go to a sea or land bordered nation, then the 12 point country and the 8 point country are swapped around(*)
    For the UK then we could only give a maximum of 8 to Ireland, Iceland, France, Holland, Belgium, or Norway.

    b)Lump the 18 non-finalist countries into 3 groups of 6 and collate all the votes as one for each of the three groups.

    c)Draw a line down the middle of Europe. Those to the west of the line can only vote for finalist countries in the east and vice versa.

    There.

    (*) Yes, I know in that case Jedward would have only got 8 from the UK – But we all know the reason why they got the 12 from us. The most obvious protest vote in the contests history…

    Reply
    1. Weaver

      Are there 20000 hotel rooms in Baku? Depends on whether they can get this to land.

      I haven’t yet run the full regression tests and crunched the statistics, so will merely note that this year didn’t have a runaway winner like the last two; and that Bosnia and Herzegovina sent Proper Rock Royalty. It would be like the UK entry being from Elton John or Paul McCartney.

      This voting order was interesting – note that the UK picked up almost a third of her marks from the first few juries, Ireland had a spurt around half-way, Sweden was leading at that stage, and Italy remained on 0 points for the first half-dozen votes. At half-way, I noted “looks good for the east – Ukraine or Azeri?”, as Sweden had had most of its local vote, and the Eastern bloc had many more points to give.

      How is it fair that Germany is denied top marks from eight countries, and Moldova is denied twelveses from just two? Or that Slovenia and Croatia can exchange points, while Croatia and Serbia can’t? I don’t see either of those as viable. Compressing the failed semi-finalists, perhaps, though I don’t think that would alter the result.

      At the end of the day, the people of Europe have spoken, and determined the song they liked most. Personally, I think they’ve made a good decision, there were far worse songs in the contest and not that many clearly better.

      Reply
      1. Mart with an Y not an I

        Iain, I’m not suggesting all three should be implemented – just something to stop the douze points to them lot next door, even if the performers shouted out of key, ran nails down a chalkboard, and hit a bag of live kittens with a mallett all the way through the 3 minutes on stage.

        A absolute hardcore Eurovision friend of mine hated my idea of swapping the points around for very obvious bloc voting. I stand by it. It’s a good leveler and a deterent. As a viewer, you wouldn’t notice as you wouldn’t be told the votes had been swapped around.

        The commpression would make a difference. Particually if you geographically mixed the 3 groups of 6 up. If it stopped on of the former Russian states getting 24-30 underserved points because of who they are bordered by, that can only be a good thing.

        The one thing I do agree with you is the dynamic voting result reveals worked. It was fun guessing around jury/country number 30 where the last minute points surge was going to come from. For a while I thought Italy were going to collect a bagful and spoil Azerb. and Ukraines night.

        Reply
        1. Brig Bother Post author

          Whilst dynamic voting worked very well, it does come with the caveat that it was a fairly close result anyway.

          Reply
        2. Alex

          I loved the last minute Italy surge. Mainly because I really did like that one.

          Reply
          1. Alex

            Also the only way to properly get rid of bloc voting would be to make it 100% jury, but I can’t see that happening, and I think that’d probably make the audience feel unrepresented.

          2. Mart with an Y not an I

            Umm – back in the day, even with 100% national jurys bloc voting still occured.
            But it was sporadic, tollerated and didn’t usually dent the result that much.

            Usually, the outbreaks were..

            12 from Greece to Cyprus and return
            12 from Spain to Portugal and return
            12 from Iceland to Finland and return

  17. Jon

    Jedward got 12 points, becuase they’re known in the UK, simples.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      They also got 12s from Denmark and Sweden and a couple of 10s. Basically it did well because it’s a CHOON.

      Reply
  18. art begotti

    I’ve got to admit, when the evening news tonight talked about the Queen making a historic visit to Ireland, I secretly hoped it involved Jedward.

    Reply
  19. Dan Peake

    I wonder, if it were based on downloads, what the Eurovision chart would look like after a week. Can someone garnish us with those facts in the weekend…?

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      Attaching Eurovision scoring to the iTunes charts would actually be a funny idea, but we’d have to name a date to take them.

      Reply
      1. Weaver

        Dan, Brig, I’ve found the charts published on Monday morning (so covering Sunday) are as good a guide as any. On the grounds of having absolutely nothing to do while waiting in for the plumber, I took a copy of those lists and will publish the results in the next Week.

        Reply
  20. art begotti

    Rockabilly Satellite not attainable by Americans on iTunes. Color me pissed.

    Reply
  21. rodc

    Anyone know where I could find a complete list of sales figures for songs on Eurovision, over the decades?

    Reply

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