Eurovision in the Media: Who Cheated This Time?

[David T. Cole]

Mediay!

[SnideAsides]

Following from Turkey's hypocritical "We hate the biased voting, even though we are one of the biggest beneficiaries!" ragequit a couple of years ago, Conchita's win is making Russia want to quit and start its own Eurovision knockoff for the former USSR countries. Belarus apparently supports the move, but... I don't think anyone else will? Without straying too far into politics, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all have similar obvious reasons for staying with Eurovision, and Moldova will stay with Romania. That just leaves Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, plus the countries that don't compete at Eurovision. Georgia once tried to send a song protesting Putin to Eurovision, so it's fair to say they won't be interested, and the latter two haaaaate each other to the point where I could see them both staying in Eurovision solely out of spite.

[Lathund]

Russia getting upset over Eurovision is to be expected really. A few years ago the Russian ambassador in Stockholm lodged a protest

from the Swedish finals. I guess stuffing the act full of every russian stereotype imaginable, signing about "do svidaniya Putin" (goodbye Putin), from a country that considers Russia as the arch enemy got a bit too much for them. 

 

Would've been even better if we had actually sent that act to Moscow that year. 

[die Frau]

Well, he didn't cheat, but Andreas Kümmert, who won contest to be Germany's representative for Eurovision certainly confused people after he declined to participate and "gave" the prize to the singer who finished second (Anne Sophie.) I've been looking to see if he gave any statement as to why (besides his initial more-or-less "I'm not the right candidate" statement. Then why did he participate in the first place?) but as far as I know, he hasn't said anything. He was last seen leaving the stage as the audience booed. It was very bizarre, but I must say, very interesting live TV!

[Kromm]

Episode 5 of this season's Graham Norton Show had this year's UK Eurovision act on it.  

 

Shockingly they didn't suck.  That must be a mistake! (this is Eurvovision after all... and the UKs role is more putting up pathetic acts vs. outrageous ones).

 

Wait.  Here it is:

 

 

Not that it seems all that accurately representative of UK music overall.  A jazzy swing-music-like tune like that isn't usually in the UK wheelhouse.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Kromm

[SnideAsides]

Yeah, it's a weird year this one - I've been avoiding the songs as much as possible and only listened to the CD for the first time last night, but it feels like the better songs this time around are (mostly) the ones that are already in the final. The UK isn't shit for once, France has finally decided to stop trolling the rest of the continent, Italy's usual strategy of sending whoever won San Remo tends to feel like they consider Eurovision an afterthought but the winner this year is actually quite good, Spain's taking the contest seriously for the first time in decades, Austria won't win again but at least sent a respectable entry, Australia's been one of the favourites since it was announced they were competing... really Germany is the only automatic qualifier that wouldn't get through if they had to go through the semis.

 

But I think it's Armenia's contest to lose, with Belgium probably finishing second.

[SnideAsides]

Update: Two juries were disqualified for unknown reasons and only the fan votes counted for their countries, and Australians are complaining because the voting lines collapsed under the pressure of a 15-minute vote at 7am on a Sunday morning for a show only watched live by about a quarter of a million people.

[lovemytvshows]

With all the jury controversies from this year and the wide discrepancies in the televote vs jury voting, maybe it's time the EBU got rid of the juries for a few years. Televoters are prejudiced but so are the juries.