Can Eurovision ever be truly fair?

[WelshEurovisionFan]

As might be expected, the British public have become convinced that the EBU / EU / Europe is out to get them following the scoring of the British entry yesterday in Oslo. This is something I thought had been sorted by the introduction of a 50 / 50 televote / national jury scoring system, but it is now clear it was only Lord Lloyd Webber's influence that gave the UK it's 5th place in 2009. Therefore I would like to know what members think of the following options:

Method 1: Handicapping
Each nation (apart from the big four and the previous year's winner) qualifies as per usual using a 50 / 50 televote / jury scoring method, however when a country qualifies, the last five year's scores are average and deducted from zero. As an example if this had been in place for 2010, then the starting points would have been thus:

Norway -187, Serbia -172, Iceland -151, Belarus -145, Greece -134, Russia -130, Turkey -129, Azerbaijan -121, Romania -117, Bosnia -107, Ukraine -100, Armenia -93, Moldova -87, United Kingdom -83, Georgia -81, Denmark -68, Israel -64, Portugal -63, Albania -61, Germany -57, Ireland -49, Cyprus -46, France -45, Spain -34

Then the normal televoting / jury results are announced, and in the case of 2010, the scoreboard would have looked like this:

Winner: Germany (189 points)
Runner Up: Belgium (143 points)
Third: Denmark (81 points)
Other Places: Georgia (56), Armenia (48), Romania (45), Turkey (41), France (38), Spain (34), Azerbaijan (24), Ukraine (8), Israel (7), Greece (6), Albania (1), Cyprus (-19), Portugal (-20), Ireland (-24), Russia (-40), Bosnia (-56), Moldova (-60), Macedonia (-60), Slovenia (-66), United Kingdom (-73), Serbia (-100), Iceland (-110), Belarus (-127), Norway (-152)

Pros: Countries would have to ensure that each year's entry was consistently better than the year before thus pushing up standards
Cons: Countries may feel it is better to drop out for five years and then re-enter in year 6 with their average wiped clean

Method 2: Electoral College

Cyprus (according to the internet) has a population of 411,950 where as Germany has a population of 82.1 million and both countries have high levels of phone / cell access (Malta has Landline telephones (per 100 people) 50.4 (2005 est) Mobile phone subscribers (per 100 people) 80.8 (2005 est) and Germany has Landline telephones (per 100 people) 66.6 (2005 est) Mobile phone subscribers (per 100 people) 95.8 (2005 est)) and so therefore it is clear that Malta has a bigger voting strength than Germany as you only need a few calls to a nation to start scoring points in Malta where as in Germany yuou need to have at least ten times as many to start scoring points. Therefore make sure that all phone votes are standardised to 1 vote per set level of calls (say 10,000) so that all countries are able to vote with the same level and all the phone votes are set at parity with each other

Pros: Each country can televote knowing that it's numerical votes will be treated the same
Cons: The interval act would need to double in length to accommodate the new mathematics

 

[Etl]

Handicapping: it is complicated for the average esc viewer. I mean, they would possibly get mad if their song won , but when the handicap is applied, their song goes to the last place. Besides, with the handicapping, it's possible that a very bad song wins.

Electoral College: that's irrelevant with the "unfairness" of esc. The votes are calculated with percentages and not absolute numbers. I guess you would want 1 vote for each person, because immigrants vote like crazy and local people vote only once or a few times only.


Your ideas are very interesting, but they don't cope with the root of the problem: people don't vote for the songs themselves, but for the country behind the songs.

The best solution would be to keep the origin of the songs secret until the end of the contest. I know this is impossible. The name of the country of the songs could easily leak. I wish I could come up with a more feasible solution :roll:

 

[MyHeartIsYours]

I think the Status Quo is the best, but I would prefer if the Jury and Televotes were announced seperately. 1 - 12 points from the jury, then 1 - 12 points from the televote.

 

[ParadiseES]

Nothing in this world is or can be truly fear, my dear

 

[Morty]

Nothing in this world is or can be truly fear, my dear

Exactly.

There's one thing I'd like tho: You can only vote once for each country, but you can vote for as many countries as you'd like.

 

[Deltage]

Just because the UK isn't capable of choosing a decent song that would attract votes, doesn't mean that there are big flaws with the whole system that need to be changed. Take a look at Germany for example.

 

[94ayd]

What is Status Quo?

 

[FallenAngelII]

The Handicap Setup is the most idiotic system I've ever seen proposed. Basically, in order to win a contest, you would have to perform dismally the year before. This effectively encourages people to send in garbage entries certain years to maximize their chances the following year and penalizes countries which consistently send in good entries.

Also, nobody cares what the British people think. Clearly the British Eurovision viewers have no clue what constitutes a good song, much less so a good Eurovision song. They gave Lithuania 10 points and have in recent memory sent in garbage such as a 30 (?) yearold creepy paedophilesque (because of his song) "rapper" rapping while a bunch of girls dressed up as secondary school children sing his chorus, a bunch of flight attendants making blatant sexual innuendo and a song which sounds like the ugly, hated red-headed step-child of the 70's and 80's combined ("That Sounds Good to Me").

Did you maybe notice something, United Kingdom? The fact that virtually no one voted for you, Western or Eastern European. Even your friends Ireland only gave you a measly 4 points. Because your song was pants. Send in rubbish song with mediocre singers (Josh is mediocre at best, at least when singing that particular pile of rubbish) and the voters and juries will "penalize" you by not voting for you.

How unfair! Stop whining, Brits. Saturday, The Times printed a rubbish article about how Germany and the United Kingdom can no longer win the Eurovision Song Contest... yet Germany actually did win garnering a whole slew of points from Eastern Europe.

Not to mention that last year, the United Kingdom came in 5th. With what right do you complain about how Europe is out to penalize you?! If you send in rubbish, you're going to get bottom marks! What's so hard to understand?!

The fact that "That Sounds Good to Me" is so bad it hasn't charted on any lists, including in the United Kingdom should tell you that it's pure garbage. How dare blame Europe and propose a ridiculous system just because you're unable to elect non-rubbish entries to send to Eurovision? My goddess, the audacity!

You should thank the stars you managed to get 5th last year with your coveted Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber seeing as how the song was mediocre at best! The fact that the song peaked at 27 in the United Kingdom should tell you that it wasn't that brilliant a song, so it's no like 5th was an unfair placement for it.

Try harder. The blame lies entirely with the British people/British Broadcast Corporation.

What is Status Quo?

The current system.

 

[ParadiseES]

Nothing in this world is or can be truly fear, my dear

Exactly.

There's one thing I'd like tho: You can only vote once for each country, but you can vote for as many countries as you'd like.

That would be a great idea in my opinion. But they would get much less money from telephone calls and sms, so I don't think they'd ever do it :?

 

[JackBauer]

The only way eurovision is goint to be truely fair it's when you will have all the 100 millions viewers with a piece of paper in front of their tv and ranking all the songs from 1 to 10 or 20.

And for all the songs you won't know the country's name and there won't be any promotion


Then the 100 milions votes are back to EBU where they can all sort them out and calculate for each country their 1 to 12 points and know the true winner of ESC.

I expect this to happen by 2250 for the 305th eurovision song contest when all the people of the world will all be connected to big brother by a small computer in their brain

Until then 50/50 is fine with me

 

[94ayd]

LOL! I was pretty sure Status Quo meant that since there's no explication for it and I believe it's the best option since the first one is idiotic and the second one too complicated... It would be better if people could actually rank all songs from 1 to 25 and not just send SMSes for their top 2-3 faves.

 

[ParadiseES]

LOL! I was pretty sure Status Quo meant that since there's no explication for it and I believe it's the best option since the first one is idiotic and the second one too complicated... It would be better if people could actually rank all songs from 1 to 25 and not just send SMSes for their top 2-3 faves.

Would you send a sms with your top-25?????

I wouldn't so I don't think normal people (I mean, no fans ) would ever do it

 

[Deltage]

Yeah, I had a similar idea some time ago (rating top 10 songs, 1-12, like juries do since the votes would be more evenly distributed) but I doubt most people will want to do something like that.

 

[Margerita86]

Top 3?
I voted for 9 songs this year in the final, only voted more than once for 3 though.

This topic is ridiculouse and just part of the usual UK delusion that they deserved anything but last place with the song they sent.

 

[94ayd]

That's if you have money to spare... The top 10 idea is probably the best. 25 really is too much.

 

[Margerita86]

That's if you have money to spare... The top 10 idea is probably the best. 25 really is too much.

My phone bills are usually very low and it didn't cost much. A single call to a cellphone would have cost much, much more...

 

[94ayd]

I talk for too long on the phone, unfortunately and also, I call the people using different telephone companies.

 

[Margerita86]

Calling people having none cellphone numbers is cheap regardless of which service they actually do use, they all charge through the nose though for calling to and from cellphones

 

[Mickey]

Also, nobody cares what the British people think. Clearly the British Eurovision viewers have no clue what constitutes a good song, much less so a good Eurovision song. They gave Lithuania 10 points and have in recent memory sent in garbage such as a 30 (?) yearold creepy paedophilesque (because of his song) "rapper" rapping while a bunch of girls dressed up as secondary school children sing his chorus, a bunch of flight attendants making blatant sexual innuendo and a song which sounds like the ugly, hated red-headed step-child of the 70's and 80's combined ("That Sounds Good to Me").

Did you maybe notice something, United Kingdom? The fact that virtually no one voted for you, Western or Eastern European. Even your friends Ireland only gave you a measly 4 points. Because your song was pants. Send in rubbish song with mediocre singers (Josh is mediocre at best, at least when singing that particular pile of rubbish) and the voters and juries will "penalize" you by not voting for you.

How unfair! Stop whining, Brits. Saturday, The Times printed a rubbish article about how Germany and the United Kingdom can no longer win the Eurovision Song Contest... yet Germany actually did win garnering a whole slew of points from Eastern Europe.

Not to mention that last year, the United Kingdom came in 5th. With what right do you complain about how Europe is out to penalize you?! If you send in rubbish, you're going to get bottom marks! What's so hard to understand?!

The fact that "That Sounds Good to Me" is so bad it hasn't charted on any lists, including in the United Kingdom should tell you that it's pure garbage. How dare blame Europe and propose a ridiculous system just because you're unable to elect non-rubbish entries to send to Eurovision? My goddess, the audacity!

You should thank the stars you managed to get 5th last year with your coveted Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber seeing as how the song was mediocre at best! The fact that the song peaked at 27 in the United Kingdom should tell you that it wasn't that brilliant a song, so it's no like 5th was an unfair placement for it.

Try harder. The blame lies entirely with the British people/British Broadcast Corporation.

I'm normally happy to go along with a bit of British Eurovision bashing. Some of my countrymen's complaining about political voting is misplaced and ill-informed and we thoroughly deserved last place this year, but that's going more than a little over the top.

No one voted for "That Sounds Good To Me." The song was foisted upon us by the BBC and Pete Waterman. We only got to select Josh out of three finalists, one of whom forgot the words (understandably I guess), whilst another couldn't hit the high note.

I voted for Lithuania. I love it. It's a great Eurovision comedy song, being both funny (which can be rare for a comedy song) and catchy. The same goes for Daz Sampson. A middle aged man rapping about his school days in stone-washed denim is patently ridiculous, but the song is good musically. I don't find anything paedophilic about it. He didn't lust after the girls or grind with them onstage. It's more corny than creepy. By avoiding the bottom five, Daz justified his place in the final, and I'm proud of the song.

Scooch were pure shite though.

Brits don't take Eurovision 100% deadly seriously. If a song makes me smile through humour that's as valid a reason to vote as anything else.

 

[FallenAngelII]

I'm normally happy to go along with a bit of British Eurovision bashing. Some of my countrymen's complaining about political voting is misplaced and ill-informed and we thoroughly deserved last place this year, but that's going more than a little over the top.

No one voted for "That Sounds Good To Me." The song was foisted upon us by the BBC and Pete Waterman. We only got to select Josh out of three finalists, one of whom forgot the words (understandably I guess), whilst another couldn't hit the high note.

I voted for Lithuania. I love it. It's a great Eurovision comedy song, being both funny (which can be rare for a comedy song) and catchy. The same goes for Daz Sampson. A middle aged man rapping about his school days in stone-washed denim is patently ridiculous, but the song is good musically. I don't find anything paedophilic about it. He didn't lust after the girls or grind with them onstage. It's more corny than creepy. By avoiding the bottom five, Daz justified his place in the final, and I'm proud of the song.

Scooch were pure shite though.

Brits don't take Eurovision 100% deadly seriously. If a song makes me smile through humour that's as valid a reason to vote as anything else.

This was the 2nd time in a very long while where the British people had no say in what song would represent them at ESC. But you have a long history of voting forth shite.

Daz Sampson's rap featuring young girls dressed as school children (and that does have paedophilic undertones) was not a good song. The fact that you admittedly like joke entries and comedic entries justifies why you liked it. And really, that's a huge problem when it comes to the UK and Eurovision. A lot of the televoting public in the UK like joke entries, such as "Teenage Life" and "Eastern European Kind of Funk", thus shite like "Teenage Life" and "Flying the Flag (For You)" get voted through to Eurovision.

It's nobody's fault but your own when it goes on to fail. Also, you call 19th with 25 points (Daz Sampson's results) a whopping success or at least a good enough result to justify his place in the final?