EUROVISION 2020 - General Discussion Thread

[escYOUnited]

Please post any and all discussions regarding the contest itself, host country and city, organisation, rumours and other topics not related to any specific country's selection process.

 

[Ana Raquel]

Great draw for on paper the weaker semifinal, 2nd half and with voting

the same happened last year though (minus the switzerland part - and i personally dont think the first semi was the weakest one but most people do so....)

i really hope rtp does an actual decent job on your entry whoever they are

 

[Ana Raquel]

can we praise the fact that living legend cicciolina has everything to get at least 20 points from estonia, iceland and denmark each?

 

[HayashiM]

Don't wanna start any conspiracy theories, especially because I probably could imagine a better draw if I were Norway of Sweden... But man this "shuffling" is absolutely ridiculous! When Shantal "shuffles" the big 5, the cards sequence doesn't change whatsoever, and Jan isn't doing much better job. As for the semifinalists, they don't mix up anything, just directly pick things out. I don't think anyone actually cheated, but if the organizers wanted to, they totally could. Last year the exact same thing happened - this could be done better.
[Pardon my geeky rant, it is now over ]

 

[Ana Raquel]

I have mixed feelings about the first semi. Despite having the usual contenders, mind you that some of their national finals are considered very weak so far (looking at you Norway)

With this draw, I can see Australia flopping for the first time (and I mean for real, Kate was always going to qualify and I've been saying that since day one). Their national final has nothing remarkable (while we had Kate and Electric Fields last year) and they are in the first half. Unless they get sandwiched between Ireland (because lmao) and Belarus (who has made some... choices yesterday), it's gonna be tough for them.

 

[ESC94]

I have mixed feelings about the first semi. Despite having the usual contenders, mind you that some of their national finals are considered very weak so far (looking at you Norway)

With this draw, I can see Australia flopping for the first time (and I mean for real, Kate was always going to qualify and I've been saying that since day one). Their national final has nothing remarkable (while we had Kate and Electric Fields last year) and they are in the first half. Unless they get sandwiched between Ireland (because lmao) and Belarus (who has made some... choices yesterday), it's gonna be tough for them.

I agree, especially with the highlighted part. If the other artists in the preselection don´t offer something more interesting then I can see this really happening.

 

[Realest]

Jimmy and Ralph Siegel are from Germany. Probably their Friends massvoted for them.
On the other Side, Serhat was last in our TV despite 7 million Turks.

 

[HayashiM]

I have mixed feelings about the first semi. Despite having the usual contenders, mind you that some of their national finals are considered very weak so far (looking at you Norway)

With this draw, I can see Australia flopping for the first time (and I mean for real, Kate was always going to qualify and I've been saying that since day one). Their national final has nothing remarkable (while we had Kate and Electric Fields last year) and they are in the first half. Unless they get sandwiched between Ireland (because lmao) and Belarus (who has made some... choices yesterday), it's gonna be tough for them.

I agree, especially with the highlighted part

 

[Ana Raquel]

I agree, especially with the highlighted part. If the other artists in the preselection don´t offer something more interesting then I can see this really happening.

Yes. Even if most of the songs aren't bad themselves, most (if not all) of them are pretty much fillers. Despite Zero Gravity being a love/hate song, it was everything but bland. If they get sandwiched between two super contenders or two super remarkable songs, I don't see they getting past bottom 3 at televoting. And juries won't be able to save them forever.

 

[Mainshow]

I've taken a look at the last 5 placings of each country in its semi final and calculated its average rank (Australia just participated in four semi finals). After that, I ranked all countries based on their average scores. I know it's not going to happen that way because the songs, artists and performances are a way more important factor but just based on the country's history, these would be the qualifiers of 2020:

SEMI 1:
#1 Sweden [2,2]
#2 Australia [3,0]
#3 Ukraine [4,8]
#4 Israel [5,6]
#5 Russia [5,8]
#6 Norway [6,0]
#7 Cyprus [6,0]
#8 Belgium [6,8]
#9 Romania [7,4]
#10 Azerbaijan [8,0]
--------------------------
#11 Lithuania [9,6]
#12 Malta [10,2]
#13 Slovenia [10,6]
#14 Ireland[11,6]
#15 Belarus [11,8]
#16 North Macedonia [12,2]
#17 Croatia [12,4]

SEMI 2:
#1 Austria [7,2]
#2 Bulgaria [7,2]
#3 Czech Republic [8,0]
#4 Estonia [8,8]
#5 Serbia [9,2]
#6 Armenia [9,4]
#7 Poland [9,6]
#8 Moldova [10,0]
#9 Greece [10,2]
#10 Portugal [10,8]
--------------------------
#11 Latvia [11,0]
#12 Denmark [11,0]
#13 Georgia [11,2]
#14 Albania [11,4]
#15 Switzerland [12,8]
#16 Iceland [13,2]
#17 Finland [14,0]
#18 San Marino [14,2]

Based on the "ranking" history, one can see that Semi 1 isn't really that "open". The gap between #10 , the last qualifier and #11 is 1,6 whilst the gap between the last qualifier and the first non-qualifier in Semi 2 is VERY narrow: 0,2.

Also, it seems that semi 1 is full of sharks and power houses. The first eight countries (Sweden to Belgium) have a better average than the winner of Semi 2 (). Semi 2 has got the four least successful Eurovision countries in recent years: , , and .

However, one can see that Semi 2 is way more competitive. The difference between #1 and #10 is only 3 whilst the difference in Semi 1 is quite high: 5,8.

That list is also quite revealing, imo. It shows that the days of Azerbaijan as a clear qualifier are long gone. Same applies to Greece whilst I really think that and and got a very good draw.

However, that list got its flaws as well: I don't think that neither Iceland, Denmark nor Finland will be absent from the Grand Final but the ranking also reveals that they are no Sweden or Norway and really need to come up with a strong entry to benifit from their draw.

 

[ESC94]

@Mainshow

What do you think about the draw for ?? They can at least expect high votes from and .

 

[Decayingbooks]

the same happened last year though (minus the switzerland part - and i personally dont think the first semi was the weakest one but most people do so....)

i really hope rtp does an actual decent job on your entry whoever they are

Don't put your hopes on the portuguese broadcast, in a livestream recently commented that the budget for 2020 will be same as 2019 and putting together some things I heard and read last year I'm pretty sure that a good staging will up to the artist that wins festival da canção and any extra cost will be paid by that artist not the broadcast

 

[Mrm]

@Mainshow

Good job...but for example Israel is helped a lot with Netta winning the semi in 2018 and was the winner of the whole thing..but if Israel sends just a bit weaker song it can struggle to qualify...

 

[EscGeek]

Jimmy and Ralph Siegel are from Germany. Probably their Friends massvoted for them.
On the other Side, Serhat was last in our TV despite 7 million Turks.

I'll use that information next time when someone says that he didn't deserve top 10 in televote because only Turks voted for him.

 

[0scar]

That Tel Aviv deputy major talking about Dare to Dream, just going on and on and Chantal saying 'Talking about Dare to Dream, I always dream of more time in live television but we don't have that time' was just iconic

 

[Mainshow]

@Mrm
Thank you Of course, it depends on the song and I was also surprised that Israel ended up that high but they really had 3 (!!) Top 3 placing in the last five semi finals and I really think that all songs were weaker than "Toy" (a lot)..even though I have a soft spot for "Golden Boy".

@ESC94
On paper, Poland isn't doomed but it also needs to send a quality entry in order to survive. We shouldn't forget that these "sure" points are only based on Televoting and usually, the Polish diaspora isn't as consistant as others....

 

[Ana Raquel]

Don't put your hopes on the portuguese broadcast, in a livestream recently commented that the budget for 2020 will be same as 2019 and putting together some things I heard and read last year I'm pretty sure that a good staging will up to the artist that wins festival da canção and any extra cost will be paid by that artist not the broadcast

i can only see idk blasted having much money bc they are quite big there

 

[Realest]

Btw. the last Time was in Semi1, we won. It was also the last Time and withdrew.

 

[ESC94]

Btw. the last Time was in Semi1, we won. It was also the last Time and withdrew.

Yeah, I think you discovered a very interesting connection, then the winner can only be this year.

What do think about the hosts?? Do you think they did a good job??

I really liked them, my personal favourite was Chantal.

 

[Preuss]

Wow semi-final 1 with Sweden, Australia and Russia going in the first half
+ Norway, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belgium etc... will be tough

 

[esc87fan]

The artists' entrance of Ahoy is now known as "Door Duncan", in commemoration of Duncan bringing the contest back to the Netherlands for the first time in over 4 decades. He had been performing there for the past week as part of the "Vrienden van Amstel" event, today was the final day of performances.