Eurovision! Loved the staging (noticed we had a March of the Athletes this year, #legacy2012) and loved Petra the host but this is actually the first year in ages I’ve not really felt the need to buy the official album, or indeed download a few individual tracks from it. It was a pleasant and largely inoffensive set of songs, but very little pushed my pop buttons. We enjoyed Romania and Norway at our house party last night, but whilst both had a good sound, personally I thought they lacked a killer tune. Interestingly one of my favourites was France’s opener, which was never going to get anywhere. Finland’s seemed to be what the British would think is a good Eurovision song but didn’t really have much killer about it, which then hilariously got no votes from us.
I’m completely baffled as to what everyone saw in the Danish winning entry, we’d have happily accepted pretty much any of the five or six next entries over it. It wasn’t a runaway winner in its semi either, Russia was only 11 votes behind it. Intriguingly we only gave Ireland 6 points in the semi (and only 1pt in the final!) proving that that British sense of fair play is alive and well, or something.
So what next? We’re not one of those tediously earnest types who goes “I think you’ll find there’s no political voting in the Eurovision ACTually,” followed by “If only we put in someone who is internationally well known with a good song we’ll storm it! We could win it every year if we wanted to” when we put in Bonnie Tyler with a song that’s average at best and end up beating Cascada. There is, I have decided, no point trying to second guess the Eurovision Song Contest, other than we should try entering something a little bit poppier than we have done the last few years and enjoy the ride. It remains a good value proposition for the BBC.
That Eurovision anthem is never going to catch on.
Almost five million people watched it in the Netherlands last night, almost a third of all people in the country, and a 65% share of the TV watching viewership on the night. Germany and the UK both had around 8m watching it, but of the
Big Five France and Italy could only manage audiences of around 2m.
There is, I have decided, no point trying to second guess the Eurovision Song Contest, other than we should try entering something a little bit poppier than we have done the last few years and enjoy the ride.
This makes sense. Basically “let’s throw in something contemporary, promote it decently, and focus on getting onto the left hand side of the leaderboard.” It’s pot luck converting a top-10 finish into a podium position or (whisper it softly) a win, but it’s not pot luck to be in the bottom eight three times this decade with three songs possessing negligible contemporary value between them. Nor is it pot luck that the two songs that actually came anywhere close to a winning formula (one of them a properly good ballad that was well promoted in Europe, the other a reasonably relevant uptempo number by a reasonably relevant recent group) in the last five years came in the top half.
That’s what we should be aiming for. Top-half finishes. If we keep getting enough of those, eventually one will be right in the mixer.
Whatever about the Beeb, look at RTE…
For the last decade, they’ve been happy to just send songs that might have won in the days of Johnny Logan (with the obvious exception of Dustin the Turkey), usually via a bog-standard talent show – and not paid any proper attention to what it really takes to do well at the Eurovision these days.
They like Lordi enough to invite them onto the Late Late Show every now and again, but that doesn’t mean they’ve learned anything from “Hard Rock Hallelujah”. And Jedward finishing 8th in 2011 still didn’t mean that a great deal of time had been given to Alexander Rybak’s “Fairytale” and Lena’s “Satellite” from the previous two years…
That RTE have had financial problems ever since this recession began doesn’t matter – it’s still the wrong attitude to have towards the contest. You simply can’t keep on picking songs that might have been contemporary in the glory years of the ’80s and the ’90s, but are hardly so today – and you simply can’t keep on more or less dismissing the songs that do do really well with a cheery wave of the hand.
Alas, one gets the impression that last night’s result isn’t going to do much to change this attitude… 🙁
One might argue that, in that case, why are RTE even bothering to enter?
Well, to be fair to them, it would come across as a butthurt reaction if they did pull out – and also they do make a profit on the whole thing…
I’m trying to work out a more relevant way to do this in the UK along sort of Melodifestival ideas. This is what I idly came up with whilst walking through town – it’s probably riddled with industry mistakes:
BRIG’S SONG FOR EUROPE
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* 32 acts are selected for the finals phase, an act consisting of a songwriter and an artist. These can be established or unknowns, unsigned acts can be signed to BBC Worldwide or something for the purposes of the competition, signed acts are welcome to keep their record company backing provided they stay within the rules of the competition.
* Each Saturday 8 acts sing their songs, there’s a 24 hr vote period so the results are on a live show on Sunday. Top two acts go forward. Repeat four times.
* Once all 8 acts are selected, they’re put up on iTunes for download. The downloads up to a certain point the next Saturday are noted. The proceeds of this are split between the relevant backers and the acts, so it’s in everyone’s best interests to push their songs on to the public.
* On Finals night all eight acts will sing again and there’s a two hour voting period (this could also be 24 hours but I think we all like exciting finality).
* Each phone vote counts as one vote (20p, say), but each download during the week counts as five votes (99p), therefore the British public are incentivised to put their money where their mouths are (and also, being download, likely to attract a more youthful audience than the Radio 2 one). The BBC can keep all the phone revenue here.
* The winning act wins a decent cash prize to split between them (£50,000, say), but to make it even more exciting there’s a rolling cash jackpot (£100,000 a year, say) if they go on to win the contest. This will mean more to an unsigned act, but if their song is really good then they might stand a chance.
Where have I gone wrong here?
i suspect the beeb wouldn’t be able to promote/push the downloads too much, as it would be giving undue prominence to commercial products. and as a result of the rivalry, i wouldnt expect anyone else to push it much, so that would be a stumbling block of sorts. i like the plan though, we need to get a good song there, that’s the crux of it!
Fair point.
It strikes me as slightly mad that no-one’s really tried this sort of thing – actually letting the market decide – since Popstars: The Rivals. If I was producing The X Factor, I’d totally think about using this for finals week, given that they already let you download the performances anyway.
I’d keep it even simpler than that and just have one show which is essentially the UK Song Contest. A two-hour show sometime in March (presented as a single show, not the standard performance/results show) and ideally from an arena rather than TV studio – if the BBC can do it for SPOTY they can do it for Eurovision. 12-16 acts, selected through an open competition looking for relevent songs that wouldn’t sound out of place in the charts, not just a platform for former stars to revive their career. No judges or any sob stories or the like – each act gets a Eurovision postcard style intro which introduces the band and the song, not their story.
There could be a pre-show auditions series as a build up to the show, but initially at least I don’t see the need for semi-finals etc.
I’m not sure the UK will go for it without an element of build up, besides the market deciding is an integral part of the idea (what you’re basically suggesting is the same show Song For Europe was a few years ago anyway).
Your idea is exactly the way our song was chosen. result: no one in Germany liked Cascada (we even tried to find too many similarities to Euphoria so that Cascada couldn’t compete), the song performed badly in the charts (it isn’t in the charts anymore, although the ESC happened this weekend) and we made it to the 21st place… I think Brig’s idea is much better, I also wonder, why no one has thought about that since that popstars season (actually they had the same format in the rivalry season in Germany). Really great idea!
That’s almost exactly how we picked Jemini (nul points)… but this is still a more exciting format than we have right now.
And how we picked Javine over Katie Price – that was a TV event, even if we still finished near-last.
So, basically, Brig’s proposing a five-week phone vote knockout contest, with the addition of sales for the final. Assume that singer-songwriters and bands that write their own material aren’t excluded.
For the heats, I see no reason why the live show can’t be repeated a couple of times across the night: say, live on BBC1 at 7, repeated BBC3 at midnight-ish for the post-pub crowd, and again BBC1 Sunday lunchtime. Nick that scheduling from The X Factor. And cross-promote on Radios 1 and 2, get Grimmy and Mayo to play out the coming week’s songs.
For the final, the BBC absolutely can’t tie up with one singles vendor. It’s as if A Song for Dublin ’94 had been decided purely from sales in Our Pricey. But yes, release the songs as singles, available from your favourite online service. And get Jameela Jamil off of the chart show to read out that section of the results.
The problem is that there are such things as midweek charts, and i-pop update bars, and it’s going to be very clear going into Saturday night which songs are in contention and which aren’t. On the other hand, a winning Eurovision Song Contest song absolutely has to win in a televote, so only consider the top three from the televote, plus their sales figures?
What are the royalties for a single download? I think about 3p for the songwriter, slightly more for the performer. Assuming 10,000 downloads of a losing single, that’s £300 for the writer, perhaps £500 for the performer. Decent consolation prize, and the exposure will be worth something.
None of this addresses the real problem: the BBC’s entries are insanely safe, staid, predictable. Who picks the top 32 entries? Tony Blackburn, member of the BBC jury this year? And the British public still has a certain conception of Eurovision songs, it’ll take some years to decontaminate the brand.
I suppose to get round the initial selection having a, well, Radio 2 feeling, select songs for a single BBC1 event (Or possibly 3 instead?) via Radio 1?
This is worth a watch: you thought Britain’s Brainiest was hard?
http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=36944
Bloody hell.
That’s from Germany’s Superbrain, for anyone who was interested.
Presumably memory rather than calculation and maybe along the lines of memorising 10-25 thousand digits of pi, but nevertheless, impressive random access in a way that memorising pi is not. I’d fancy the best British memorisers’ chances of being able to do the same thing if they put their minds to it.