The ESC 2024 final is over and here are some of my personal reflections:
- Congrats to
Switzerland with victory! Not among my favourites (I like the song which is interesting better than the stage show) but popular overall, one of the pre-contest favourites, and fun for them to win again after so many years (last time in late 1980s).
- Getting so many 12 points (22 if I recall) from juries makes one wonder, however what’s going on.. hopefully nothing untoward, tactical voting or some such. Everyone in my family found it somewhat suspicious though to be honest.. one might have expected say Croatia or France to get at least 1/3 of those 12 points from juries that went to Switzerland..
- Congrats also to
Israel with a great 5th place, weathering the heavy 'storm' in every way and impressively getting 2nd most public votes and almost 100 votes more than the winner Switzerland. Very impressive indeed! My personal winner!
Hopefully the juries were not deliberately trying to sink Israel to ensure Israel would not win.. hopefully the surprisingly few jury points to Israel (substantially less than any others in the top 10) were coincidence after all. If not, it's a scandal in my view regardless who is the victim.
- Another ESC-year where the winner is
not the public favourite. If I recall correctly, 4 songs got more televotes than the winner (Croatia, Israel, Ukraine and France) which will 'put fire' in the debate whether the juries should have less (or no) power in ESC. This also means the people did
not want Switzerland as winner, far from it. It was the juries that wanted it.
I have been of the personal opinion that 50% juryvote 50% televote is a good compromise in ESC but more and more I am beginning to wonder if the juries (often consisting of just 5 people) have too much power and end up deciding the winner so perhaps the televote should count more (say 70% televote 30% jury) so the public's voices are heard better.
- Very disappointing evening for Gåte and
Norway. I was uncertain how they would do result wise since the song is different than most but coming last in the final was very very underserving in my eyes. The juries trashed us again (for the nt time) and this time the public too. But we are proud of you, Gåte!
- My favourites tonight were: Israel (best song of them all!), Cyprus, Austria, France, Slovenia, then Ukraine, Norway, Spain and Georgia.
- Biggest surprise for me was that the Irish entry which I frankly thought was pretty awful did so well. No one in my family could believe it when it got so many points, we had it in last place. Must have been a protest thing to some extent is my thought. Cyprus did worse than I expected, Finland also while Armenia and Portugal did much better than I thought they would. Disappointed that Austria and Slovenia were so little appreciated.
- Very happy that demonstrators were unable to sabotage a great ESC-evening which many of us enjoyed despite all the controversies. I feared someone would get up on stage and wave a flag (or worse) and cause a drama.
- Great final show with great professional hosts imo.
Sweden for sure know how to do this with quality. Some booing (as expected) but nothing major to destroy the joy and fun of the event. Great to see Alcazar again in action, also great tributes to the Swedish legends ABBA!
Well done, Sweden! A great final with lots of enjoyable music entertainment held in very difficult citcumstances but with quality, style and fun. And all this despite naysayers, haters, critics and people who wanted this event to be a fiasco after all that has happened in the past few days. They did not get their way and I for one am happy for that! Music and togetherness conquers all!
Already looking forward to next year’s ESC in Switzerland!
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