Shortly after Sweden’s Måns Zelmerlöw won Eurovision 2015, fans of Italy’s Il Volo were up-in-arms. Despite coming third with televoters — and 87 points behind televoting winner Italy — Sweden won Eurovision because of the jury. It ranked him 104 points ahead of jury runner-up Latvia, and a staggering 182 points ahead of Italy, which it ranked sixth. For the first time since the introduction of the 50-50 televote-jury split, the winner did not win televoting.
The juries were introduced to reduce the effect of bloc voting, raise the quality of songs, and help Eurovision produce potential radio hits. To some extent they’ve done that. For instance, the juries prevented Cyprus from handing its 12 points to Greece this year.
But this year’s result has led some fans to question the system. National juries consist of just five people. Do they really deserve the same power as millions of voters? There’s another major issue with the juries: they don’t always operate fairly. Just look at how the EBU threw out the results in Montenegro and Macedonia this year, the lack of diversity present on some panels, and the fact that (supposedly) independent jurors have at times made surprisingly similar decisions. Oh, and they sometimes flagrantly violate the rules. (Like voting for their friends who they’ve known for years).
There’s no perfect system — televoters can be bought (see allegations here) and so can members of professional juries. But should the current system be reformed? Below some of our bloggers give their opinions and suggestions. Needless to say we don’t agree with each other. Some say leave the system as it is, while others advocate, among other things, eliminating the jury, reducing the jury’s weight in the overall vote, and upping the number of jurors in each country. You can watch a video discussion featuring four of us below, and also read 11 (dissenting) opinions.
Where do you stand? Let us know in the comments box below. Then vote in our poll.
Eurovision juries: Time for reform?
Robyn: The purpose of the jury vote is to keep the public vote in check and to dampen the impact of regional favouritism and loyal diasporas – and that’s largely how the jury has been able to function. This year the jury preempted the UK giving the Polish entry 10 points (sorry, Monika, but “In the Name of Love” wasn’t that good). And for the first time in decades, the jury rankings meant that Cyprus only gave Greece eight points instead of the usual 12. This is a sign that the 50/50 jury/televote system is working. 2015 was a weird year with three incredibly strong songs battling for supremacy, and while the difference between the jury and televote favourite was a surprise, it doesn’t mean the system is broken. After all, the exact same voting system gave us Conchita’s victory in 2014 and no one was bothered by that. And – realistically – there were no real surprises in this year’s overall top 10. As always, the televoters and the jurors together got it right. As I’ve said before, just because your favourite song didn’t win, that doesn’t mean the whole voting system is flawed.
Verdict: Keep the jury as it is
Vebooboo: For the public’s votes in the world’s most viewed music competition to be watered down by the random and subjective opinions of a group of 250 “experts” (five per participating country) is ridiculous. One look at this year’s results show that a) Eastern Europe no longer dominates the televote and, more importantly, b) the jury is not a panel of experts. For songs like Estonia’s and Albania’s to get shunned is a shambles…and so is this system. And you know what: if something is broke you need to fix it. On one level I’d happily argue for a much larger jury with the same 50/50 split. But I think it just further complicates what is meant to be a joyous affair. Let’s just eliminate the jury and give power to the people to see what happens. After all, all of the world’s established democracies allow their citizens to vote for their president or prime minister — do we really think Eurovision should be handled differently?
Verdict: Eliminate the jury
Bogdan: It is the first time in Eurovision history since televoting was introduced when the televoting favourite doesn’t win the contest. If the EBU doesn’t change the voting system, viewers will start considering the Eurovision Song Contest a sham. Why waste money voting for your favourite when the votes of the many can be nullified by the scores of the few? Juries should be involved in the earlier stages of the national selections if broadcasters deem it necessary, but for the big show the voting should be purely democratic. This will also eliminate any suspicion of bribery, which doesn’t always seem like mere suspicion.
Verdict: Eliminate the jury
Jason: The perfect voting system does not actually exist. Arguments can be made for and against all of the voting systems that have been used at one point or another in Eurovision, and I’m not going to bore you with the pros and cons of each one. The reintroduction of the juries has helped the Eurovision Song Contest reclaim some of its credibility as a song contest, rather than a gimmick fest, which many felt the contest became in the mid-noughties. But I have to ask: wasn’t the original aim of the contest to bring together the countries and the people of Europe? If the people of Europe place a certain act first, then why should the juries be able to change that? Why give the public a voice and then have the power to silence them? I think that the juries should stay for their (theoretical) moderating influence, but that their power should be reduced or revised.
Verdict: Reform the jury
William: It’s ridiculous to me that just five people comprise each national jury. That gives a handful of people the same amount of power as tens of millions of voters, which hardly aligns with the values of the European Broadcasting Union. The Eurovision Song Contest is not just about the song. It’s a TV spectacle and entertainment should play a key role. Sadly juries drain the contest of its humanity and life in the search of a radio hit. How many Verka Serduchkas have we seen since the jury system came back into play? Very few. And so-called gimmick acts — Russia 2012, Romania 2013 — didn’t win the televote anyway, suggesting the jury’s nullifying effect wasn’t needed. This year some members of the public responded to the moving backstories of Finland’s PKN and Poland’s Monika: Did they deserve to win? No. Did they deserve to come higher because of the total package they brought to Vienna? Absolutely. Increase the number of jurors to 25 per country, or reduce their weight to 25% of the overall vote. The people deserve more say in this. Also, let’s revert to the pre-2013 system whereby jurors ranked their top acts, rather than having to rate all 27. This creates a drag effect and allows jurors to punish countries they don’t like. When ranking songs 12 to 27, it can become a bit random. I think there’s an implicit bias to rank Scandinavian acts higher because of the region’s street cred in pop music. Remember: Jurors list their name by their rankings. When in doubt, perhaps they just vote Scandinavia.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Deban: I’m all in favour of the jury, but the current system calls for reform. Firstly, it is completely unacceptable that five appointed people can tip the votes of millions of viewers. Also, in the current format, some of the jury opinions hold zero “expert” value. My suggestion is that the EBU should have a jury panel of about 25-50 people per country. Also, all panels should consist of music experts, and entertainment industry professionals. This will make them less corruptible and their votes more respectable.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Anthony: I’m in favour of keeping the juries simply because they (1) reduce diaspora influence and (2) improve song quality. Yes, there’s still diaspora voting to a certain extent, but it hardly decides the winning song nowadays. Going back to 100% televoting runs the risk of repeating our past mistakes. Improving the song quality means there’s less reliance on gimmicky novelty songs. Those complaining about Sweden this year seem to have forgotten about Azerbaijan’s Eurovision win under the old jury system in 2011: they won the televoting section but only managed to finish second with the juries. The juries cast their votes on the night before the televoters. There’s currently no perfect voting system and both 100% televoting and a 50/50 split have their flaws, although I still find the current 50/50 split much fairer. Doubling the number of juries from each country from 5 to 10 may make the system less susceptible to corruption and more representative of musical professionals than it currently is.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Francheska: The idea of having basically impartial juries is like having a series of hookups and neither side becoming at least a little bit emotionally attached: Great in theory, just doesn’t work in practice. We see that political voting is strong among the juries (which they were supposed to eliminate), and that they are only representative of so many genres and perspectives of music. They can punish countries they don’t like (a suspicious amount of former Soviet countries pummeled Conchita during the grand final), and the opportunities for corruption abound. At the same time, though, so many songs that do well would not have qualified without the help of the jury (see: Azerbaijan this year). With all of that said, I’m supportive of the system similar to 2008 and 2009, where the jury can save one song from each semi-final. However, because everybody will be bitter about the ethnicity of the jury no matter what, I say we get a jury of 9 people, from countries that have never participated in the Eurovision Song Contest and are not associated in such a way that it would be a conflict of interest. They agree 6/9 on who gets to proceed. So we get a basically impartial jury with the source of democracy that has earned Eurovision a ton of praise. The Grand Final gets to be entirely televote, and we don’t have to worry about shady juries. Giving the juries so much power creates an incentive for corruption and bribery, and we should aim to take away that power. Fran out.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Luis: Jury voting at Eurovision needs to be rethought. The disproportionate chasm between juries and the public is no good for a contest which aims to increase its viewing figures: five people can’t represent the opinions of any country. Also, the selection of the jury members needs to be reviewed: gathering five random past participants or some experts is not enough. Therefore, I suggest three guidelines: (1) the voting should have a 75% televote, 25% jury split (2) the number of jurors has to increase and (3) their selection must be public. I’d go for a high number of jurors like 20 or so, divided into categories: former Eurovision stars, music producers, critics, and Eurovision fans. Countries could also include Internet voting to select the jury, which would be a good way to fill the gap between the end of the National Final season and the beginning of the rehearsals. It’s all about democracy and fair play, so the more transparent the jury selection is, the better. The jury should stick to its purpose to reduce block and diaspora voting — that’s why I’m all for a lower percentage of the total vote for the jurors. In the end, it’s up to Europe to decide, and if a majority of voters in Spain give their vote to Romania, the final results should reflect it. SMS doesn’t know about diaspora.
Veredict: Reform the jury
Josh: Lesbehonest, when it comes to the juries at Eurovision, you will never please everyone. The elimination of the juries would upset a lot of folks, but would also please plenty more – evident in the opinions of my colleagues. This year my home country Australia had the opportunity to participate and vote for the first time ever. I’m 23 years old and I have been a huge fan of the Australian music industry for a very very long time and it was incredibly disappointing to find out that I had only ever heard of one of our jurors. I like that the jurors do have an input in the contest in an attempt to eliminate supposed bloc voting, but the concept does need tweaking. The EBU needs to regulate the rules of the juries further to allow jurors from different musical backgrounds and different demographics – age, gender, etc. This will provide a broader perspective from a professional standpoint. I don’t think some fresher eyes would hinder the contest in any way either.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Mikhail: Good and bad come hand in hand with the juries. In their favor, they award unique songs and strong voices that may not appeal much to the public, but which deserve high results. For example, Norway came seventh in jury voting, but without it it would come only seventeenth. Secondly, juries prevent diaspora voting from overwhelming the contest. For example, in German voting for the second semifinal, Poland, which has a big diaspora in Germany, came first in televoting, but German juries ranked Poland very low, as did many other jurors across Europe. On the other hand, politics colours some jury voting. As an example, look at the Lithuanian vote this year: the jury ranked Russia twentieth overall and some members ranked Polina dead last, whereas looking at the final results it doesn’t seem to be deserved (also, Russia came third in televoting). Juries are an essential check and balance to the public televote, but we should increase the number of jury members to decrease the effect of biased voting.
Verdict: Reform the jury
Poll: What to do with the juries?
You can vote for as many options as you’d like, but you can only vote one time
[polldaddy poll=”8917469″]
My suggestion as last resort for juries:
If Europe would ever want this, shuffle the juries and assign them one by one as juries of different country (apart from their own). Just like what experimental researchers do in laboratory settings.
Did I miss something? I always thought the jury consisted of TEN people! Five people, quite probably at random, are not enough; nor is it diversified enough. If it were up to me, I’d break up the jury into 5 age groups, choosing 2 from each age group (16-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60+). And once again, I would eliminate the jury performance (which I believe is conducted hours before the televised live performance), and force the jury to watch the same performance as the rest of us. Let them grade each performance during the performance or during the intermission… Read more »
There is an obvious solution. Nobody with a little brain wants political votes to decide the table in Eurovision, but the juries today aren’t real juries. What are they judging? What political system was abolished when Moldova’s all jurors give Romania’s 1 place and Armenia’s all jurors give Azerbaijan’s 27th? It’s ridiculous, some jury members vote political more then the televoters. And then, what are they judging? There are no clear rules, they judges what they like, or what they are interested in. Let’s be honest, so many jurors put Italy this year under 15th place, no objective vote could… Read more »
Keep the juries but reform it. My changes are: 1. Juries should rank only their top 10 songs, like the eras 2010-12. 2. Increase the number of juries to 20, and will grouped according to age. 3. Juries should at least know other languages (like French, Spanish, Polish, etc.) 4. Decrease their influence from 50% to 40%, giving the public 60% of the decision. 5. There should be a Rest of the World jury (composed of Eurofans from outside Europe who are also music professionals). Like most people would say, juries are important so that it neutralizes the effect of… Read more »
I say, let other countries outside of Europe do the jury voting. We here in the Philippines would be happy to give out points to those who deserved it.
PhysalisFranchetti finally someone that gets me!! It may of been a situation in which the criterias judged would mean sweden was a clear winner. Also the jurors these days tend to not vote for what touches them and what they connect with but what they think the public will like. I have to say that we should keep the jurors however they should not in any way effect the winner the televotes have chosen. An example in a contest is strictly the judges effect the results but not when it comes to the final show there scores are used as… Read more »
George +
First of ll :Why every country have it’s own jurors? I mean, they are suposed to be music professionals and the languge of music is universal.So,there should be a single jury of like 40 people representing all the countries. idelly, the ebu could send invittions in distinguisted-non european musicians round the world to ”judge” the songs without knowing which artist represent each country, if possible. Regarding the current voting system there are many questions about the juries. And the biggest one for me is the criteria they use to rank the song. How can a juror rank a song 4th… Read more »
In music the old fashion festivals where juries decide the winner have lost their audience and disappeared. Eurovision has a brand name true and a history of jury voting but should the name be risked with so much power to juries? Because currently the name is for funny, glamorous, spectacular. Since the juries were introduced the songs got blender and more uniform with every year. Not sure how much audience is for a festival of Swedish composers and copycats of them.
“If this contest had been fought in the televoting years, Sweden would not have won.” And if the contest had been fought in the FORTY-TWO YEARS BEFORE THAT, Sweden would have won. The Grammys don’t have a televote. The Oscars don’t have a televote. The Olympics don’t have a televote. Why should Eurovision have one? All everyone is doing in these comments is demonstrating why THEY aren’t music industry professionals. I’m curious as to why none of the fan sites seem to have bothered to actually interview some jury members about their votes. It’s not like their identities are a… Read more »
jurija ka lyp mja qi nanen, si eshte kjo pune kshtu, shikusit e votojn te paren e jurija te nizetegjashten, nes eshte 50 me 50 duhet mja jap 6 pike
The jury should definitely stay. It has it’s uses e.g. avoids Cyprus giving Greece 12 points every year no matter the quality of the song, and dampens the power of diaspora voting (I highly doubt the UK audience really thought that Poland and Lithuania were the best two songs in this years competition).
Changes that I think should be made have been covered already: more jury members (40 or so for each country), they mark only their top 10, have actual musical professionals, and the split goes 60% public 40% jury.
You know what EBU should do? Ban Azerbaijan and Armenia jury vote. They vote each other super low each year and its already a problem with the televoters doing that why have it twice?! Just ban every countries jury who vote the same countries last each year. Then we can talk about is. Macedonia & Montenegro had their jury votes cut so why not do the same with those countries that have obvious corrupt votes. Like I said the televoters might be as corrupt but we do not need corruption TWICE…
I think the problem with the juries is that JURIES IN SOME COUNTRIES USE THEIR POWER TO DETERMINE WHICH COUNTRY SHOULD GET POINTS AND WHICH ONE SHOULD NOT. That’s the problem. I do believe that the jury system needs to be reformed if they’re going to keep it. Both Eastern and Western countries are guilty of of this.
These writers really cant get enough of this. Sweden won, get over it. Eurovision is finished. The juries are simply necessary and eliminating them will give us poor winners like the early noughties and 2008.
Now can you stop shoving these stupid posts down our throats and get back to what it should be, like new songs by past singers etc. This is just boring.
well this year we heard as an excuse that juries vote for what can be a mega hit! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA such a nice joke. So in 2011, Italy, who won the jury voting, had the possibility on becoming a hit? of course not. Televoting has its pros and cons but every year peacks the right winner. if a song is going to win, is going to win. corruption exists MOSTLY in juries. No one had explained to me why someone placed italy 18th while won the televoting. Musical taste is like ***holes. Everyone has one. But the opinion of the viewers… Read more »
Retain the juries! As many have already said, they help minimize diaspora votes. Diaspora votes are damaging as it will lead to more predictability (more than now) & devalues the level of songs. A lot of the fans are so emotionally attached to songs due to both logical & silly reasons (admit it, most of you probably like certain songs because the performer is eye candy or your heart bled because of the back story). Remember, this is a song contest not a beauty pageant/modelling contest or the Emmy awards for best drama series. If you prefer that, you are… Read more »
I think both jury and televoting should stay. However I think the voting system should be changed. I would like that every country relased their ranking from 1 to 27 so the scoreboard at the end its a true reflection of how well or bad each country did.
The juries MUST stay. But I think that should have more than 5 juries per country. Of course, sometimes they do big mistakes (Estonia, my favorite of this year, was 11th on the jury voting). But also the televoting do big mistakes. (C’mon, put Albania 9th in the grand final, with a girl who can’t hold the key?! Not voting for another great acts?!). It’s good that we have both juries and televoting, so then we can have a “balance”. Countries that were “killed” on this year’s competition by televoting: Cyprus, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Malta, Belarus. (Maybe Slovenia, that came… Read more »
@Mitchelvaneijk Sweden may have got the trophy in their hands, but it will be a problem for them too that they didn’t win the televote. If this contest had been fought in the televoting years, Sweden would not have won. The jury vote and the televote need to match up – this is why the EBU try to make sure that the jury is representative of the population in terms of age and gender. No-one can re-write history (well only possibly if we decide to play football instead at Eurovision 🙂 ), but in the future, the EBU needs to… Read more »
In terms of my country (the U.K) I like the work of our jury. Year upon year, countries such as Lithuania and Poland top the televote in our country due to the diaspora (although I would totally vote for the U.K if I was in another country haha.) Our juries make our votes more interesting, rather than it simply being 12 points to Poland and 10 points to Lithuania.
Keep the juries, maybe reform them, and eliminate the televotes. It worked before and it still works 🙂
The jury have to stay please! 🙂
I think, that the jury might have actually ranked Italy so low, because it wasn’t as good as the others. I love it, but maybe they thought, that it’s sort of a generic popera song. It’s name is Grande Amore. There really isn’t anything special about it compared to other popera songs.
I believe we should go back to the previous public/jury system where only the top 10 of each were taken into consideration. I believe it is silly for the judges to rank a song 18th or 25th … you simply don’t like them so how do you determine which one is better? Whereas if you just select your top 10 you can easily make a choice. In that system you would not totally undermine the public vote. I.e. when the British public gave Poland the first place last year and the jury gave it last it got zero points in… Read more »
Most of the wiwi guys summed up my opinion perfectly in that the jury is necessary but needs major rethinking and reform. You cannot justify giving 5 people of subjective and often questionable reputation the same power as tens of millions of viewers. There’s surely many more people within the public that have a more qualified opinion. The ranking system was also brought up, and I see now that it’s also a huge cause of concern. Why do only jury members get the power to drag acts they don’t like all the way down, when the public technically only gets… Read more »
Europa es muy falsa,no solo se deve solucionar lo del jurado tambien las canciones plagio.VERGUENZA
The juries are a big help to participants who got low votes all in all. But they need to be careful when choosing their ideal winners.
I think we definitely need to keep the juries but revert to the pre-2012 system. Ranking from top to bottom is a terrible idea and I question the sanity of whoever thought of it. I’d like to see the juror who can tell me why they consider rank 21 to be better than rank 22. It’s also made the contest blander from year to year, with audience favorites being downvoted cause they’re not as commercially appealing. If an entry is popular with audiences, juries shouldn’t be able to rank it last and deprive it of a single point (see Poland… Read more »
Jury voted only for performances, so shut up! This is not charts! This is live show!
@ YES.. I have already suggested this voting method.. Countries should start voting all the songs in the final except the last one.. Like this.. Last – zero 0 points 2nd last – 1 point 3rd last – 2 points 4th last -3 points etc…. >> 4th – 23 points 3rd – 24 points 2nd – 25 points 1st -26 points The current format that the winner song gets 2 more points than the 2nd & 4 more points than the 3rd one it is completely unfair.. We should just ditch this voting format that just only 10 songs receiving… Read more »
Could the OGAE in each country make up the national juries???
I think that a new voting system is necesary. In my viewpoint, countries should give 1,2,3,4,5…26/27 points in order to help countries witch are in the top 15 of lots of countries
Keep the juries in the 50% range BUT reform them.. Increase their numbers from 5 to over 10-15 so the voting of a single juror would not have much power to affect the overall result of the juries.. It is really lame when 4 juries would vote a song in rather high place and then if the fifth juror ranks this song on very low place to hurt the song’s ranking.. And it would be really ideal if all of us televoters had the same option like the juries have…To vote & rank all the songs from 1st to 27th… Read more »
The televote winner may have won the contests until 2015, but the juries ruined the suspense twice consecutively, and lets face it – the voting is the most exciting thing about Eurovision. In 2011 Azerbaijan would still win with full televote, but only 2 points ahead of Sweden, imagine that! with the juries watering down the drama the Azars came 32 points ahead of the second place, and their victory was clear at a relatively early stage of the voting. Same was in 2012 when Loreen came first only 11 points ahead of Russia in the televote, and the juries… Read more »
The juries may have prevented Cyprus from handing its 12 points to Greece this year, but they also prevented Iceland from handing its 12 points to Italy, as decided by the televoters, and instead gave it to their friend and ally Sweden. Back in 2012 the juries saved Ukraine, a country with many allies, from a second to last place it received from the televoters and sent Gaitana to the final, at the expense of The Netherlands, a country without any allies other than Belgium who didn’t even vote in their semi final, who made it to the televoters’ top… Read more »
As stated before, the juries of 5 have too much power, and are susceptible to pay-offs, collusion–yes, corruption. Either reduce their power or increase the number of jurors, perhaps to something like 15 or 20, which allows for more diversity of opinion, and less chance of corruption. Furthermore, jurors should be actual professionals in the music industry, not some random backstage singer as mentioned in the video. Yes, the jury has their place, but this year with such a discrepancy between the tele-vote and the jury, the EBU MUST do something to REFORM the jury voting system, lest the whole… Read more »
Of course it must go, arent we mature? The 2015 winner ir italy, but the juries again do the same
Eh.. Who is really proffessional?? Music is more about taste in my opinion. And the public don’t always vote for best song! Voting for staging and looks etc. are far more common among the public than among the juries.
Reform the juries. But if after reform juries are still capable of decide the winner or to completely deny people vote in many countries then remove the jury. Jury should not be empowered to destroy people vote.
I’m not quite sure what to think, except that there’s no perfect way of voting. Also, juries should be voting on the same performance as the public. But to Deban’s point about Spain, Edurne missed her high notes. That performance deserved the place it got. And like another user, I’m glad the juries severely marked down Poland in 2014.
Keep the jury because in the old days it was 100% jury anyways. I don’t think televotes were introduced until late 90s or early 2000s.
I say to reform the jury, but eliminating it all together wouldn’t be a bad thing. People think that the televoters will always go with the upbeat pop songs. Of course, a majority of the winners in the only televoting period were upbeat, but when there was a great ballad it won – Serbia 2007 coming to mind (and Russia 2008 if you think it deserved to win.) This year shows that again, as Italy won the televoting. I think televoting is diverse each and every year, and that people are going away from their traditional bloc voter ways, and… Read more »
From the video: “How could a panel of so-called music experts possibly downvote bladee bleedee bloo …” I don’t know. WHY NOT FIND A MUSIC EXPERT AND ASK THEM? Because clearly there aren’t any on the panel. Grande Amore got marked down for being shouty by-the-numbers popera, with a presentation that consisted of three guys just standing there. Songs like that are a dime a dozen. And as you have already seen, they do not burn up the charts. And Deban essentially gave a hall of fame list of the poor performances of the last several years that were laughably… Read more »
Back in the day (’70s) as I recall, the jury was far larger than 5 people – 12, I think. 5 is far too few, and they seem to be chosen at random. I still think we should consider changing the voting points as well, though – why 8-10-12? Why not 8-9-10? It wold be much more interesting to watch as 3rd and 4th place-sitters have a much better chance of catching up and overtaking the leaders. A close finish would be far more convincing, and probably more representative of the choices of 200 million people, and less obviously open… Read more »
The Albanian juries always vote high for the neighbors while the televote don’t. Like always FYR Macedonia , Montenegro Greece Italy and Serbia are on they top 10 .The juries are so corrupted.
A 50/50 Jury-Televote honestly has the best chance to please everyone. They punish horrible songs ( Finland 2015, Poland 2014, ) and help songs which are amazing but might have not done so well in televoting ( Norway 2015, Hungary 2014 ). Yet the songs which may seem as too contempory for the Jury ( Israel 2015/Norway 2013/Latvia 2015 ) are actually helped/not damaged by the jury. Most of thesongs outside of this years top 10 ( You might as well include Serbia in there ) showed that they have a huge diaspora/neighbourly voting. Poland/Lithuania topping the United Kingdom’s televotinf,… Read more »
I THINK JURY DOES EXACTLY OR ALMOST THE SAME WITH TELEVOTING.GIVE 12 POINTS TO COUNTRIES OF THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD.
I PREFER TELEVOTING,I BELIEVE MORE TO THE CRISIS OF COMMON PEOPLE.ANYWAY THE JURY IS NOT ALWAYS SO PROFESSIONAL.ALSO ITS UNFAIR 5 PEOPLE THAT CAN CHANGE THE WHOLE TELEVOTING. IT COSTS TO PEOPLE LOTS OF MONEY.
FOR ME BETTER 70% TELEVOTING AND 30%JURY.
The jury should revert to the way it was between 2009-2012, the current one puts too much emphasis on them… Also, balancing out diaspora or neighbor votes doesn’t mean putting certain countries last or nearly last in the overall jury ranking, regardless of the song or the performance, just because you know they’ll place high in the televote… That’s just ridiculous and should not be accepted…
I find the jury good because they dont look at neighbours. Ok some of them do but for example i am going to take malta this year because i really liked the song and i followed it very well. They came 5th with jury and 12 with televoting i believe ! Although they ddint qualify they still had a chance of qualifying because of the jury and that shows that they truly vote for song quality not neighbours only