{"id":9164,"date":"2016-02-18T13:21:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T13:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=9164"},"modified":"2016-02-18T13:27:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T13:27:54","slug":"royaume-uni-deux-cent-soixante-seize-points-new-eurovision-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bothersbar.co.uk\/?p=9164","title":{"rendered":"Royaume-Uni deux cent soixante-seize points – new Eurovision voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has been one of the bigger stories today, the Eurovision scoring system is having a massive overhaul. Rather than having countries mark in the Strictly Come Dancing<\/strong> style, where the jury vote and the popular vote are ranked separately and combined to give a final vote tally, this year each country will give two separate sets of points\u00a0– a jury vote and a televote – effectively doubling the number of points on offer. In theory this means that influence is still 50\/50 between juries and televoters, but it’s calculated in a different, apparently fairer way. A song that does well with the jury but bombs with the televote, or vice versa, should now be able to pick up points where previously the disparity may have left it outside a country’s top ten picking up nothing.<\/p>\n

How will this be represented on the night? The Eurovision site<\/a> suggests that the jury votes will be read out 1-12 in the traditional manner. After all the juries have declared the points earned from all the country’s televotes combined will be revealed starting with the song which scored the least, so if Germany let’s say scored 7 points in the French televote, 5 points in the Belgian televote and 1 pt from the UK televote they would get 13 points added to their jury score to get their final total, whereas a country that does very well, like the UK, might get a big wodge like 276 points just added to their jury\u00a0score towards the end. You won’t have to sit through all the countries declaring again, it’ll all come at once.<\/p>\n

Why do this? The official line is that it will make the voting more exciting on the night. Previously, even with algorithms<\/a>, there will always be a pull-away point where the winning song is the clear winner in the voting. Using the patented Big Wodge system nobody will quite sure until right up to the end.<\/p>\n

Why full jury results and not full televote results when that’s likely to be of more interest? Fair question. My take is that having the night finish on the whim of half a billion people is more dramatic than finishing the night on the whims of around 200 jury members. The televote scoring will still be available online after the show.<\/p>\n