Welcome to JOYEurovision for the 2013 season

In our first podcast preview for Eurovision 2013, Hikaru and the latest member of the JOYEurovision team: Catching Up’s Brett Schryver review the entries for the Big 5 (UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy) and host country Sweden.

JOYEurovision 2013 Preview Part 1.

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• Eurovision 2013: First Poscards Released (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2013: All Acts and Songs Confirmed! (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2013: Semi-final 1 Analysis and Predictions (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Eurovision song contest (Photo credit: kjelljoran)

Even as the GFC began to take hold in Europe, many believed that Eurovision would still continue on oblivious, but with Portugal withdrawing and Greece & Cyprus looking likely to do so, Eurovision 2013 could see a significant drop in countries.

Is Eurovision ripe for reform? And if so, what kind of reform should the contest have?

Andy & Hikaru discuss reforming the ESC in this special podcast.

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• They’re not singing any more: Eurovision suffers rash of withdrawals (guardian.co.uk)
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• Belgium: Roberto Bellarosa Selected for Malmö! (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2013: Ticket Sales and Partnerships (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)

English: map from CIA World Factbook, converted from original format Türkçe: Azerbaycan’ın CIA tarafından oluşturulmuş haritası (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Andy & Hikaru discuss this in a special JOYEurovision podcast report: Azerbaijan: The State after The Show

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“JoyEurovision” embraced the glitter ball AND went behind it … big time !

It combined fandom with some hard-nosed reporting & analysis, while at the same time never losing sight of the historic and the ridiculous.

We are mightily chuffed with the nomination and also send our congratulations to our fellow nominees at RRR, 3WBC & Coast FM .

Also, a big sloppy kiss to the Joysters involved with the Joy 94.9/3AW simulcast and the Digital Clocks Project at the station – they too have been nominated.

The CBAA is the peak body for community radio stations in Australia.

The gongs will be handed out in November at the CBAA’s annual conference.

Read more here.

In the meantime give “JoyEurovision” ago and discover 30 hours and more of podcasts, blogposts and much more.

A month after her triumph for Sweden in Baku we got the chance to speak with Loreen.

The line was scratchy and the whole enterprise was fraught, but Hikaru & Andy had a great few minutes.

Loreen is a warm and impressive spirit.

Her reaction to her Eurovision win, her notable & outspoken condemnation of Azerbaijan’s human rights record during the 2012 and her heartfelt debt to the gay & lesbian community rang true.

Here’s what she had to say about her ESC triumph:

One of Loreen’s influences is the Melbourne musician Lisa Gerrard, and Hikaru & Andy ask Loreen about Lisa and other musical influences:

And she had this message to her GLBTI fans … before the phone connection went cactus:

Eurovision that is.

Or are there some worrying signs ?

The singers and the songs have come and gone, but the number of viewers who watched the Baku brouhaha is still a bit murky.

A European Broadcasting Union media release which was let loose within minutes of the ESC 2012 ending stated: “Europe’s public has voted Loreen from Sweden, winner of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan, before a worldwide viewing audience of more than 100 million.”

A worldwide viewing audience of more than 100 million.

Really ?

Since then there has been no further release to confirm either that or any other number.

Eurovision Times (http://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com) reported on June 1st that the audience figures announced so far, and from the “major” ESC nations,  suggest far fewer people than 100 million people watched the Contest this year.

Here they are as presented:

Germany: 8,3 million

United Kingdom: 7,5 million (peak: 9,6 million)

Spain: 6,5 million (peak: 9 million)

France: 3,98 million

Italy: 1,4 million

Sweden: 3,24 million

Serbia: 3,1 million

Greece: 2,4 million

Romania: 2,3 million

Albania: 0,68 million

Netherlands : 1,1 million (2nd semi: 2,1 million)

Denmark: 0,99 million

Austria: 0,66 million

Estonia: 0,4 million

Portugal: 0,65 million

Finland: 0,56 million

Croatia: 0,4 million

Israel: 0,12 million

Cyprus: 0,225 million

The dudes at Eurovision Times make that around 45 million…I reckon they’re about right.

Irish public broadcaster RTE hasn’t issued a press release about its ratings.

So much for the Jedward effect!!!

Curiouser and curiouser.

Here in Australia around half a million watched a delayed telecast on SBS, with about half that audience in Melbourne – the home of JoyEurovision !!!!

I am not yet climbing board the “We’ll All Be Ruined” express, but I just want to flag that it may be about to leave the station.

The Big Five sign the cheques.

The Germans, Brits & Spaniards may be happy enough to pay the bills, but how much longer will the French stump up.

The poor Italian ratings MAY be linked to RAI’s exile from the Contest until last year.

But all in all, it’s a not too happy picture.

The only comfort is the incredible loyalty of some of the smaller european countries to the ESC.

If I had the time I would research this, but I will posit that more people watched the song clips than watched the actual event.

There’s something wrong there isn’t there ?

Something wrong.

Mmmmm.

Perhaps THAT should have been the slogan for Eurovision 2012.

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

This year has been quite like no other recent Eurovision. The fallout from it has yet to really be seen, but is already being felt.

In a three-part post-contest podcast, AJ & Hikki discuss where Eurovision went and where it is going to after this year’s contest.

In Part One, we look at the BBC, and how the way the BBC launched the campaign for their entrant Engelbert Humperdinck, and whether it played a role in the UK achieving second-to-last place.

In Part Two, we look at how the contest this year unfolded: the political frisson between the host country and the press, the change in the way the voting recap was done, as well as the voting.

In Part Three, we talk to Rick of the website 12Points.tv, on possible Swedish plans for Eurovision 2013 as well as the difficulties of covering Eurovision 2012.

Related articles

• Ireland: Jedward Won’t Return To Eurovision (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Editorial: Letter To “The Guardian” (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2012: Several Terrorist Attacks Allegedly Averted (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2013: New Rules May Exclude Belarus, Azerbaijan or even Russia (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Eurovision 2013: Austria, Netherlands And More Confirm Participation! (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• Score Analysis 2012 (1) : The Final – Part One (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)
• France Almost Confirms Participation For 2013 (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)

The Eurovision glitter ball is tarnished after this year’s Grand Prix in Azerbaijan.

There are big questions being asked.

Questions which go way beyond the endless debates about language and live orchestras.

They are questions about the fundamentals of an event created to heal the wounds of World War Two and which managed to cope with the often violent re-drawing of the map of Europe in the 80s & 90s.

Put simply, there’s something of a stench surrounding the Baku event & it’s making even the most uncritical of Eurovision fans question the nature of the event.

The overtly bloc voting & the farcical interval act featuring the Azeri President’s son-in-law are the least of the problems facing the event.

The Baku government says Azeri agents foiled plots by Islamic extremists to kill foreigners at the ESC and assassinate President Ilham Aliyev.

In an e-mailed statement  Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry Azeri said law-enforcement officials killed two members of the armed group, including its leader, and arrested 40 more.

Watch this space for more on this story.

Meanwhile the contest almost found itself in the middle of a diplomatic incident.

Norwegian national broadcaster NRK considered pulling out of the 2012 ESC when a team of its  journalists was harassed by Azeri authorities as they were about to leave the country.

The Norwegians’ crime was to ask questions about human rights issues in Azerbaijan, albeit for a comedy show.

And the Baku bash has prompted a clamour from the United Kingdom, Austria & the Nordic countries for a tightening of the membership guidelines of the European Broadcasting Union.

The demands are simple enough.

If you come from a country that doesn’t respect democratic and humans rights you can’t be a member of the organisation and, therefore, you can’t get to sing your song every May.

And that puts Belarus and this year’s cheerful host Azerbaijan in the frame.

The standard of the telecast & a popular winner couldn’t disguise that Eurovision is in strife.

Sweden’s win means the ESC will return of the ESC to one of its bastions in 2013.

And that offers a chance of redemption.

These are interesting and difficult times.

The Grand Prix survived kowtowing to Franco’s Spain in 1969, it can rise above the current difficulties.

Good will and some honesty would help.

The dust is still settling.

Loreen is still a bit excited, the Azerbaijan president’s son-in-law Emin Agalarov is getting booking inquiries from licensed clubs all over western New South Wales and fears mount that it could be Engelbert the Last.

So it’s time to look at the entrails.

Hikaru & I have some post-contest podcast action coming up and we are currently working out how to make JoyEurovision an ongoing web presence performing key performance indicators to a global  level of …. OK, no need to go down that avenue !! Simply, we won’t be going away.

Still to come podcasterly speaking, a look at the voting trends and the take out from Engelbert Humperdinck’s dismal performance for the UK.

This blogpost is my take on the 2012 telecast and it begins at the middle and with Emin Agalarov.

His presence as the featured performer at the interval was simply a disgrace.

Mr Agalarov may or may not be a decent singer, BUT his links by marriage to the president of the host nation should have excluded him from any discussion of what form the interval act should take.

It looks bad.

It was bad.

This kind of stuff belongs to the late 1950s opening night programs of regional ITV stations in the UK & commercial TV in one of the smaller Australian capital cities.

“And performing the xylophone solo with the City of Scunthorpe Brass Band for the opening night of Anglia Television is Alderman Harry Trubshaw, Chairman of the Lincolnshire Conservative & Unionist Party.”

There are several questions to be asked. And they are being asked across the world: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/26/153761771/at-eurovision-2012-politics-take-the-stage

Whose idea was it ?

Who didn’t question that idea from the outset ?

Who didn’t raise concerns after that ?

Who didn’t intervene to prevent the debacle.

The answer to at least two of those questions is: the European Broadcasting Union.

Azerbaijan’s national broadcaster İctimai Television may have been under political pressure, I favour the SNAFU situation.

The channel didn’t think the thing through and probably hoped nobody would notice the blindingly obvious.

Well, if the majority of the audience didn’t clock the identity of the “musical entertainment” they probably did notice a bloke ostentatiously kissing the Azerbaijan flag at the end of his “performance”.

It was like a pre-election rally warm up.

More seriously, it was crudely nationalistic and played to all the bad vibes about Baku & Azerbaijan.

It was unseemly and some suit from the EBU should have yelled ceased and desist.

Worse than anything else, it was just plain dumb.

Now to other matters.

The standard of the broadcast was excellent with less rapid fire cutting by the director allowing many of the performers to establish themselves.

The camera positions also meant we avoided seeing  much of the aimless flag waving during each song.

Mind you, there were ridiculous numbers of mobile devices cluttering shots of a live show being witnessed by the very people clinging to them.

Memo to the world: You can live through your own eyes and memory.

The size and structure of the stage was perhaps a little too large for some competitors to cope with.

But three entrants – Loreen of Sweden, Spain’s Pastora Soler & Rona Nishliu of Albania – owned the stage in fine examples pure and simple performance.

When we got to the results part of the night someone somewhere forget the notion that a scoreboard is to show the score.

Within a nano second of whichever MTV wannabee spokesperson revealing his/her or its “douze points”, the board of the score disappeared from the screen to be replaced by a caption telling us exactly what we had just heard.

In music, pausing a beat creates something.  In Eurovsion, pausing between voting countries allows Joe & Joanna Public to work out which song is up & which is down.

Just linger on the scoreboard a little dudes.

It was quite a task to keep track of the 1-2-3 until Sweden nuked the field, the grandmothers distressed any one with taste and  Željko Joksimović showed his mettle made the picture clear.

That’s a minor quibble, but as Hikaru & I tackled the voting via the TV in Joy 94.9′s Studio One it was a major issue.

The show looked a little too much like far too much event television.

Eurovision is unique and deserves better than some version of every talent show on television.

But overall, a solid effort from İctimai.

I hope Sveriges Television learns the lessons from Baku, although I did hear that the Assistant General Secretary of the Moderata Samlingspartiet (biggest party of Sweden’s ruling government) has resumed his singing lessons.

Be very afraid, his karaoke favourite is  “New York, New York”.