Last week, Czech Head of Delegation Jan Bors teased changes to this year’s results presentation. And now the Eurovision.tv website has been quietly updated to reflect these changes. But what are they?
Unlike the massive overhaul in 2016, there will only be a slight change to how the results will be announced. The new rules read:
In 2019, the presentation of the votes changes slightly. The order in which the televoting results are revealed is determined by the ranking of the jury result.
The announcement of the televoting results will start with the country receiving the fewest points from the juries and end with the country that received the highest points from the juries.
The presenters shall announce the sum of points that each song has received from the votes of the televote across all participating countries.
Scores will still be calculated in the same manner as the last three years. However, we’ll have to wait until later in the voting sequence to see if an act has flopped with the televoters. And should an act be battered by the juries, they’ll receive their televote boost much sooner.
For example, in 2016 Poland’s Michal Szpak would have been the second act to receive his batch of televotes, rather than the third last. In 2018, Sweden’s Benjamin Ingrosso and Austria’s Cesar Sampson would have been the last two acts to receive their votes, even though both under-performed with the public.
The presentation of the jury votes will remain unchanged.
YouTuber ESC Luxembourg has made a simulation of last year’s results using the new system. Compare and contrast with the actual voting sequence.
The semi-final voting sequence remains unchanged. As per tradition, the exact placing in each semi will not be revealed until after the grand final, so as to avoid any potential biases.
What do you think of the new rules? Will it make the show more exciting or less? Let us know in the comments.
Why can’t they do the televote scores first low to high and then the jury vote because in last few years we have seen less and less favouritism from juries. In the televote u are seeing the bookies fav and the song that’s been really hyped up doing well in televote or ur seeing countries with neighbours and diaspora scoring high. Where as juries are becoming a little less predictable because the fans have been all over them for years about there unfair voting so we are seeing a small movement in jury voting surprising us. Maybe this is just… Read more »
less favouritism from juries? trying telling that to Sergei and the fake jury result of 2016
I love this change. Actually, it is very clever, as they will have the viewers stuck to the TV until the very last minute. Tension until the end. Love it.
A big NO NO.
PLEASE. DO. NOT. CHANGE. IT. IN. SUCH. WAY.
My guess since they started being transparent about the split results in the live broadcast is that the juries won’t stay for long. Next, we get rid of the concept of big Five, and countries like the UK might actually put out an effort in order to perhaps end up in the final.
We might get Turkey back in the contest.
The overall goal is for contries like Portugal to receive their first victory.
If I were presenting the ESC…
“Now all the votes have been counted and added up, I can tell you that the winner is…”
(I just saved about an hour of television broadcasting time right there.)
In *Ryan Seacrest’s announcer voice mode*.
😀
https://www.change.org/p/european-broadcasting-union-get-the-ebu-to-revert-to-the-2016-method-of-revealing-televote-points
petition to go back to the old method of revealing the televote
I don’t like this change, I want to know which countries are in the top 10 with the televote right then and there, and I want to know the top 3 and the winner of the televote at this crucial moment, it is way more interesting than the so called “jury vote” aka bunch of random people-vote. With this system it is impossible to know the televote-winner if you are not following the points super-carefully. This is just a way of saying to people: Your winner doesn’t matter. Like in 2015. Bring back the old system and get rid of… Read more »
Will they also show the reactions? Even if someone gets 0 points in televoting?
Interesting point bc if sb receives many points they will broadcast the reaction for sure
Subtle change, but I think it gives more interest to the start and the middle part of the vote announcing. Thought the final is less interesting. Anyway, let’s give it a try. At least, you don’t know how many points your country is going to get when called. It could be 5 or 250 points!
So, does this mean we’ll only hear *one* result per country: jury+televote combined?
Or how would it work?
I guess the new system aims at softening the blow when countries get a really low score in the televote. Still, I’m not a fan.
Very good change. It doesn’t matter that we know what country will be called next, what it matters is that the number of points can be 300 or can be 0. It will not be a mess, because if you want to know the jury /televote scores, you will have to google anyway. Or if you want to have a pen and paper in front of you, will be easier to write the points that way, following the jury order.
Stop changing things for the sake of changing them! We were all unhappy with the change back in 2016 but from a logistical standpoint we could understand why they did it. I don’t see any benefit of changing the reveal of votes to this; Sweden and Austria’s low televote scores show us that the suspense there isn’t necessarily guaranteed.
I loved that change in 2016!
you can be sure that the producers already have in mind how certain countries will perform and how they want their favourites and winner to be revealed. It won’t be like last year.
At first I thought ‘what a stupid idea’. But seeing the simulation based on last year (thank you) I think it’s a great idea!
But I wonder: as example, we would have Switzerland racking 60 jury points and placed 17th, but suddenly they got 239 points and got total of 299 points and placed 5th, while probably Sweden got 247 jury points and becomes current jury winner and… boom. Public gave them 36 points. 283 points in total…
Would it be a mess or…?
Its already up. The guy is called ESC Play on YouTube
Guess it’s a good way of keeping Australia and Sweden invested until the very end of the voting. 😉
Last year would have been even more humiliation for Sweden with this new system because the camera would have been focused on him as a potential winner.
Can someone really imagine at this point of the scores that they will not show the delegations before the announcement ?
My OCD is cringing hard, somebody help ASAP!
I don’t like the change, I would stick to last years’ system. I don’t think it will affect the drama, it will still be nerve-wracking. But it will make more confusing to figure out the final televote ranking before searching online for the results. Last year for example we had Czechia and Denmark making to the top 5 with the televote. In the old system, it was a great moment for the artists to be between the last few acts to receive their points. With the new system, theses moments would be gone, because their results would be announced earlier… Read more »
I totally agree with this. The new system doesn’t bring any more excitement imo, but little moments like the ones you mention will be lost.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. 🙁
Most people won’t care about the split results. They’ll care about the winner.
Same discussion as in 2016… “Oh, this new system is horrendous! The world is gonna end!”. Apparently, everyone now loves that same system. LOL. Calm down, people! Let’s give this madness a try. If it doesn’t work, in 2020 a new one is introduced. Or not. Like, who cares?
which stupid idea was this?
Swedes can you let Eurovision alone. If you wanna change voting system, play with your MF, leave Eurovision alone
It’s enough that you always get jury votes.Even if you send song with farting, you would get top jury votes.
Don’t ruin Eurovision for other nations
And people why Swedes get defensive…
Well, maybe if people like Maritza and other nitwits like her didn’t come up with lies and accusations we wouldn’t have to get defensive. But now that every idiot on the Street hates Sweden why not hate on them for this too? Even though they arent involved in it..
Är least make an effort in disgusing your hate for Sweden, that’s what others do..
Or maybe because we put the blame on Sweden because they are the ones to blame? Why is it that all these changes have occurred when Sweden have hosted the contest (with this being the only exception)? Why are these changes so familiar to MF? I can see why some changes were made to improve the logistics of the contest but soon enough it will become making changes for the sake of changing things and that is not good at all.
It’s awful, I would much better prefer the old system with the spokesperson giving out 24 points, announcing the jury and televote 12 points. But the 2016-2018 version was the best. Also San Marino should not have a fake televote. They should have a watch party at a big place and make everyone vote their favorite.
If they add the actual placing in public voting… so… for example: It’s only Austria and Sweden on board…
Sweden… got 23rd place in public voting and that is 21 points!
-That way would be much more transparent especially for viewers like my mother or grandmother or anyone else that watches it without reading lot of stuff about it before 😉
Yes, that would be fine.
This way gives more attention to juries result (as the public vote is unclear)… and previous one gave more attention to public voting as it was announced in order…
I would like public vote results to be more transparent, so I prefer previous way of presenting votes.
I always felt like Eleni actually thought she had won after the results were announced last year. Looking at her reaction, she does not look disappointed – she looks as if she thought that Cyprus had just been called as the winner. Which is pretty natural, normally when there are only two people left in competition, it is the winner’s name that is announced only. I’m sure she was familiar with the format and seen rehearsals but also in the moment her head was all over the place and she was not thinking clearly. A valid theory?
No, she celebrated getting Cyprus’ BEST ever placing in the contest. Plus the fact that out of 26 countries, Europe voted her 2nd which is huge. Think about it, you’re representing a country that hasn’t done quite well in the past year so you perform to your best, hoping to turn this around. How would you have felt when you not only get a good result but its BEST ever result?
I would be very pleased and excited and proud, but in that moment also disappointed that I had not gone one better and won the whole thing. It could easily have been her victory. Netta was afraid.
I mean, Netta and Eleni got along very well and they respected each other so much as artists. I’m sure she was happy that out of all her competitors, it was actually Netta who won. So I’m pretty sure she knew she didn’t win but was just happy regardless.
She knew she didn’t win. It’s not hard to figure out that if there’s only your song and one other left to receive points and the other has more jury points than you that it is impossible to win without being first in the televote. Besides, you can clearly see she is disappointed when Cyprus is announced second in the televote, but still tries to act happy and proud of her result.
Viewers won’t get a sense of the placing of the televote because it’s not going to be in ascending order. It might help the camera people to know the order of who to put the camera on who because there’s an order
Omfg that’s so confusing. I like it the way it is now. No need to f*ck with things that aren’t broken.
To which ever country wins this year go back to the way we’ve been doing it the last couple years please.
Where is the “Don’t touch my f***ing voting system” petition? I wanna sign
I don’t think it’s necessary and even a bit worse than the current voting system which is actually completely fine
nah it will get rid of the suspension
I don’t agree someone, because the current system creates fake suspense. If you watch the second video above at about 7:55 you’ll see what I mean. Austria is shown in a threesome presentation with Cyprus and Israel. That’s because Cesar was in the lead, having had both his jury and televote scores. The other two hadn’t received their televote, but from the points available it was obvious both would overtake Austria. Yet Cesar and his delegation were still being presented as potential winners with the presenters wrongly telling us “anything than happen”. The new presentation will be slightly better, but… Read more »
^ Sure, it was possible in theory, but it hadn’t actually happened since 2003. The expanded number of voting countries made it less likely.
The biggest advantage people seem to be forgetting here is that it would actually not be THAT confusing. It would always be the lowest country on the scoreboard (that hasn’t received their points yet) that would get its points next. So there would be more structure in that sense. Personally, I still think it’s a bit unnecessary because this could and probably will create situations where the moment the winner is revealed would still be confusing because they would first announce the televoting points of the jury winner and then, only mention who actually won the contest. Last year, for… Read more »
So in the Grand final firstly we will hear point’s of Spain/Australia and lastly The Netherlands?)))
Anticlimactic!
Revealing the televote scores in order of low to high really honored the public’s top 3. I will miss that.
Why can’t they Leave the system alone? Oh yeah because they need to mask how out of touch the juries are with the public. This system means it not as instantly obvious when a televote winner has been vetoed by the jury as with Russia in 2016.
In 2016 juries were professional and fair
But in 2019 that was just a circus
Sorry in 2018
I agree about the circus statement tbh.
But if anything splitting the vote in general highlights the differences and if any juries are playing a shady game it will be that more obvious.
Just because we knew the vote was split pre-2016 doesnt mean most people watching at home knew it.
It should be an average ranking of all the other countries, not just 10 . It’s unfair, because those 10 countries are less likely to get points from San Marino, since they can’t vote for themselves.
I’d guess that’s the result of 2 top entries by juries not even getting into Top 10 by the public last year. It would be LOL funny to see Benjamin getting 21 points right at the end of the voting although it’d be obvious by then that Netta is the winner.
I’m not entirely convinced but it’s interesting idea and I’m willing to give it a go. I was expecting something worse.
If Danish jury member voted the way she wanted in 2016, there would be only 9 points between Jamala and Dami Im and not 23. San Marino’s “televoters” gave 5 points to Australia and full 12 to Ukraine…
Not a fan of this. If they did it this way last year, I would have found it very anti-climactic. It was fine the way it was
One problem I could see with it is if the song ranked 1st in the juries got smashed in the televote. It would be a strange thing, like “and blablabla gets… 15 points!”. “Hmm, yeah…”
Also it doesn’t change anything in terms of suspense if you have this extraordinary tool we call a calculator!
I mean…does it matter? Give it a few years. They’ll change the voting system in some other weird way again. They’ve messed with it once, they’re about to change it again, ….and now they can’t stop.
Just watch. They’re never gonna settle.
Sweden is the new North Korea of Eurovision. Guys look how you sound. With this new sistem we would still got the same points. Christmas are the same day. ESC can have some changes once in a while. Get over it:)
Eurovision doesn’t belong to Sweden. Deal with it
Lighten up! Why always the negativity when every single bit of change is announced? In 2016 you commplained how the new voting system would destroy, how bad it was and so on. How the core was gone.
Yes the new change will bring some differences but it might turn out just as well as the 2016 change. Until we see how it works stop complaining! Take the contest for what it is: a bit of fun! Stop analyzing everything!
Just because you are swede doesn’t mean we will do anything you say,we are not christers Bjorkman pets BB
No. It’s definitely not a change for the better, as the public should know immediately who is the televotingwinner and the influence on the total scores.
Now you only see it afterwards, and only if you study everything very closely. They make it more complicated than necessary. The average viewer wants to know 3 things:
1. What is the ranking with the juries
2. What is the ranking with the televoting
3. What is the total ranking
Number 2 is very difficult to see, and as a consequence the new system is doomed to fail.
Average viewer wants only the total ranking and the winner. Up until 2015, most viewers didn’t even know about the split results.
This seems like a great way to make the jury not seem biased, but in fact shows how biased the jury really is.
For an Average viewer it will show them. For us superfans we immediately notice this.
Wait what? So we won’t be getting the points from each country’s jury individually? Like, that’s destroying eurovision culture. I hate it. I would rather watch an hour of each country announcing their points alone than this.
No not at all- the only difference is that the televote totals will be announced in a different order!
At whose behest was this done, EBU? Sweden? The old adage applies here: “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” Can’t see how this adds anything to the contest. I guess someone wants to avoid early embarrassment in the televote!
Australia surely.
it adds suspense, we won’t know the winner until the very last country is announced.
Seriously? Who the hell would even cross his mind that Austria was even possibly televote top 5.
We all knew that 59 points ahead of Israel was not enough even before the televoting scores started.
Yes yes. You will note vote for Sweden and Australia because thay have opinions. Good someone has opinions
A terrible and unnecessary change. It’s easy to miss who actually won the televote and which country placed where in the televote. Christer, it’s time to retire!
Christer Björkman hasn’t been in the EBU reference group since like 2014 and can’t therefore decide. But Ok, keep blaiming Sweden for everything!
That’s my point too. The ranking in the televoting will be a big enigma. Probably Bjorkman thinks the viewer is not interested in these data, but I think the viewer wants to be able to follow the whole. The ‘old’ system is easier to follow and for that has more excitement. On top of that give new rules a chance to work out first, before changing them again. It’s going too fast and without reason.
Christer is not involved with executiv decisions such as these.
Too confusing. I’d rather have televoting points as they were or if you want another system, have them also submitted country by country with someone like OGAE local member reading them.
EDIT: Another potentially interesting idea would be having both juries and televote switch from 1-12 point system to 1-26 point system, with ALL votes being counted in. That way, if someone was 11th in 12 countries they would get more recognition than a null point. Just an idea…
We have to keep the “douze point”!
Ok, I agree, it’s a great tradition by this point… Still, having some differentiation between the middle and the bottom could be a nice idea down the line.
I like this!:-D
OK but whyyyyy???? :(((
This is a horrible change, please reverse this.