You are asking me if the Cypriot televoting results are enough evidence. Evidence for what exactly? What neighbours is Cyprus always voting on aside from Greece? Do you claim that Cyprus votes on neighbours only? How do you know it doesn't appeal to the wider public? How do you measure that ? How do you measure this appeal in Southern Europe? We would have to ask everyone living there, one by one. Has there been a research to support your claim? What about Cyprus granting 10 (or 12) points to Aysel and Arash back in 2009?
Evidence of vote tampering. The neighbour I was talking about was Greece indeed and both have been exchanging 12s for a very long time. Since the televoting era it never happened that the Cypriot public would reward their 12 points to anyone but Greece, except in 2012 and maybe 2013(we can't be sure here, considering that the actul split results were never published and the broadcaster didn't make anything public regarding the votes). So when one of a song that doesn't fit into the group of songs that recieved top marks from the televoters in the previous year beats Greece, then that is quite fishy. Add to that, that no stacionary televotes were registered and every vote came through SMS voting. It's more than obvious that some shady business happened. It's like finding a youtube video that got a million views in one day and less than a 100 people liked/disliked it. A more than obvious indication that something is very wrong, because things simply don't add up.
How do I know that songs like "When the music dies" don't appeal to a wider public? Because songs like that never do that well in televoting. They normally place somewhere betweern 8th and 14th in the televoting of the final. These ballads are not appealing enough for the majority of people who vote, so they most of the time get like 5 points or less from the televote. The only countries who have such songs in the top of their televote in the final are neighbours or maybe countries that have a singificant diaspora. The ballads that the general public goes for are something like A million voices or Undo my sad, not something like Georgia 2010, Ukraine 2010, etc...The results of the previous years clearly show that.
How do you measure the appeal of certain songs in certain parts of Europe? Again with the results of previous. You can see quite clear voting trends. And ballads like When the music dies can count mostly on jury support and maybe a few scraps from the televoters in Southern Europe, definitely not 12 televote points from anyone. It's the same with what I expect from Italy this year, just reversed. Most televoters will come from the south and the more northern you go, the less likely the country will give it televote points. Oh and Malta will probably reward them their 12 points from the televote, since now no one else is "securing" their top marks.
What about Cyprus granting 10 (or 12) points to Aysel and Arash back in 2009
It was 8 points, from which 8 came from the televote and 4 from the jury. Nothing fishy and unusual here. Uptempo songs like this one are generally well recieved down there. The only thing that would make the results strange is if that song beat the song from Sakis in the televote, which is theoratically possible, but in reality is just as likely as San marino winning this year.