Amid all the drama and tension of Saturday night’s results, it seems that one jury member didn’t quite give the scores she intended. Danish jury member and Dansk Melodi Grand Prix veteran Hilda Heick has admitted she was confused when entering her jury results, and ranked the songs in reverse order.
This means that her favourite song, “The Sound of Silence” was ranked 26th, while her least favourite tune, the Georgian entry, was ranked at the top.
And this affected the points given by the Danish jury. As the results stand, the points given in the grand final were:
- Ukraine – 12 points
- Australia – 10 points
- Belgium – 8 points
- The Netherlands – 7 points
- Bulgaria – 6 points
- Lithuania – 5 points
- Sweden – 4 points
- United Kingdom – 3 points
- Israel – 2 points
- Spain – 1 point
But if Hilda’s song order had been reversed and new averages for the Danish jury calculated, the new scores would be like this:
- Australia – 12 points
- The Netherlands – 10 points
- Belgium – 8 points
- Sweden – 7 points
- Bulgaria – 6 points
- Spain – 5 points
- Israel – 4 points
- Russia – 3 points
- Lithuania – 2 points
- France – 1 point
It would have given Australia a deserved 12 points, while Ukraine would have missed out on receiving any points from Denmark. Russia would have received 3 points, but the UK would have missed out on their 3 points. Spain would have picked up an extra 4 points, while France would have got 1 point from Denmark.
She made the same mistake in the semi-final, giving Kaliopi her top score, with “Dona” marked as the least favourite by the rest of the jury.
But importantly, Hilda’s confusion didn’t effect the overall winner of Eurovision 2016. Jamala would have still won with “1944” regardless of Hilda’s points.
Speaking to Danish media, Hilda says she was mortified when she discovered her mistake. “My heart stood still. When you realise you’ve done something wrong, it’s very uncomfortable. When I came in and saw the voices, I could see that I had voted the opposite of the other.”
She explained that she thought she was giving scores instead of ranks, and therefore gave Dami Im the top “score” of 26.
Hilda has been criticised by Danes on social media, and told BT that it had made her reluctant to be involved with Dansk Melodi Grand Prix again – but she’s not ready to quit yet.
the jury should not be allowed to vote.
Haha….the “fake”! votes actually disaplys a MUCH better (and more rocky!) music thaste than the “real” ones 😀
QUESTION – do these jury members supply a reason why they like one song and not another, we have singing competitions in Wales where each performer has a verbal and written report on their performance so that they know how they can improve their performance etc. It is time consuming however these jury members could be given more time and resources to do this. I also want to ask do these jury members get paid? I think they need to be more answerable for their choices otherwise why have them?
I would be very unsympathetic especially when these contestants have put so much into their performance on behalf of their Country and to the benefit of the ERU – the voting system was excellent and thrilling this year and it would be a shame for it to change back just because these jury members have behaved this way. Some of the jury voting was strange although exciting this year. The EBU have a responsibility to ensure the quality of juries and have a plan b if this sort of thing happens again.
Hahaha oh wow! Leave that poor woman, she’s like 100. I wonder why she didn’t like “Dona”, though.
I second Wawwu’s suggestion. If juries are meant to reflect professional opinions linked to the music culture of each participating country, why don’t we make them transparent and accountable on that?
Maybe there could even be a mechanism to exclude specific jury votes/give the televote more weight if all jurors can’t give a good enough reason for their choices.Maybe have the jury votes reviewed by an international jury, maybe or maybe not with some televote component, from otherwise non-participating countries?
Reform of some kind, though, is definitely needed, especially given how visible the jury picks are now.
[Continued] I forgot to mention that I would also get rid of the present vote restriction to countries foreign to the phone line in the televote (not so in the jury vote).
IMO, they should ditch the current score system (12, 10, 8,…1) and replace it with a ranking system in preferential order (1st, 2nd,… 26th). Averaging the rankings of each song from all the juries they would get the final ranking. Then proceed likewise with the televote. The song with more votes would rank in 1st position, and so on. I would get rid of the compartmentalisation of the votes by country. All the popular votes from all the countries would be added together to determine the televote ranking. Finally you could combine both jury and televote ranking with a particular… Read more »
Too much power concentrated into the hands of 5 people in each voting country. Said it before, and I’ll say it again: the juries need to be expanded to about 10 or 15 and vetted properly so we don’t get these types of silly mistakes. I thought their marks were checked for accuracy by some accounting firm?? Apparently not! Makes you wonder how many other “mistakes” were made in the jury voting! Come on EBU! Get with the program! :/
I think that they need to stop with this ranking system where they have to rank them all from 1st to 26th. Instead just have the jurors score their top 10 and then add them together, like they used to.
Probably Sweden asked why they have been marked so low and Denmark had some explaining to make.
This is simply ridiculous! I can’t even laugh about it. But I agree that this only shows the disproportionate power that one person in the jury, and of course the jury overall, can have. Not to mention the quality of the ‘professional’ jurors. This is not just an innocent mistake! Weren’t they explained the rules properly before the contest? Apparently not, which is really serious
GET RID OF THE RANKING SYSTEM!!!
Emma M is correct that she appears to have done the same in the semi. The points changes as far as I can tell are
Ireland 4 -> 8
Belgium 8 ->7
Israel 5 -> 6
Norway 6 -> 5
Latvia 3 -> 4
Slovenia 0 -> 3
Bulgaria 7 -> 2
Switzerland 2 -> 1
I think she did the same mistake in the semifinal. It didn’t alter the result at all the biggest change would be that Ireland would get 8 points from Denmark instead of 4 and Bulgaria 2 points instead of 7. It didn’t alter any positions if it had changed the quilifier for the final it would have been a big thing.
I think she did the same mistake in the semifinal. It didn’t alter the result at all the biggest change would be that Ireland would get 8 points from Denmark instead of 4 and Bulgaria 2 points instead of 7. It didn’t alter any positions if it had changed the quilifier it would have been a big thing.
Iconic lmao
Generally in the UK, people don’t like the winning song, which is a shame. It’s not something that I think the majority of people over here tend to listen to again and again, so I’m with schmuck. In regards to my opinion, I think it’s a terrible song and a horrible winner. I was gutted. I do think that the EBU need to reassess their rules regards the contents of entries because if Italy, Germany, Poland or the Netherlands had entered a song about being deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis, this wouldn’t have made it to Stockholm,… Read more »
Maybe the UK jury did the same thing, how could anyone seriously give Georgia 12 points?
Lookig at the jury points, she might not be the only one lol
This is another proof for the jury having no clue what they are doing. I feel sorry for this old woman.
@DavidWho I didn’t mean everyone talking about the contest. I love Eurovision and love reading what’s written about the contest, other people’s opinions don’t bother me but a lot of the ugliness and rage I’ve been seeing on the blogs and YouTube does.
Breaking News: I am warming up to and starting to accept the Ukrainian victory.
However, given the Danish voting error and some really crazy individual votes of some jurors that look like upside down, I would not be surprised if more news are yet to come.
@Dan: Thanks for that info. Trends duly noted. 🙂
In 2012 Lithuania was 14, and now is 9 (with Donny Montell)
In 2012 Iceland was 20, and now is in the semi (with Greta Salome)
I think that both artists were much better in 2012, but Donny was saved by
that somersault. In 2012 both had better songs, and better look (Donny).
Greta did not alter her look and that is why she is still beautiful, but Donny
should know that all he needs is a classic haircut and a suit like in 2012.
@Jai: The whole point of this blog and its comments section is to discuss issues focused on the Eurovision Song Contest. Telling all the bloggers, press, music experts and fans to “shut up” on this blog is hilariously funny. Some of us spend a siginifcant amount of our lives on the Eurovision – some of us even get paid for it. But we don’t get paid to “shut up;” if only that were true!! 😀
Why this is not reflected in the results on wikipedia or Eurovision.tv? I see that these sources still show the original points.
Is the EBU planning on making an official rectification?
Honestly everyone just needs to shut up!!!! It’s a song contest that exists for entertainment and some of y’all are getting really angry and annoying. At the end of the day no matter who won people would be complaining. Just shut up, a song you don’t like won, your favorite lost . Get over it
It’s crazy that Ukraine went from 0 to 12 just because of one juror. I think this is proof enough that these people have way too much power in their hands.
Poor old lady tho lol.
@ninasublatti: Chill out girl. Go out, do some yoga, read a nice book or play with your sex toys. Chill out, please.
ONE SINGLE JUROR CAN INFLUENCE THE OVERALL WINNER OF THE ESC!
Imagine!
Wtf???
@David Who:
Lithuania only got the UK televote’s 12 points because of diaspora. Have a look at the last three years of our televoting. Poland and Lithuania are in the top 2 everytime. There is no way that mess of a song that Lithuania sent in 2014 should have won our televote.
Aside from that I thought they were good entries this year (I was very surprised by Poland coming last with the juries) but their real popularity was probably distorted in the televote.
Just let every jurymember write down a motivation of max 50 words for all the songs in which they review on the quality of the song, act, production and singing and why they ranked them that high/low. And let that be transparent to everyone. then you force the members to focus more (not like the Russian jury who was busy taking selfies on periscope) and the explanations and reasons are more clear.
This is outrage!
Australia got robbed like hard……..
@anna: read the article, honey. she won’t win even with the added 2 points and ukraine losing all its 12 points from danish jury. she will still be in second place behind ukraine with slightly narrower margin and that’s it.
Wel maybe jury members must only qualify to be a jury if their IQ is over 50 😉 There is no need to rank someone 26th. You only need to rank your top 10!
@Anna: Mathematically I think Ukraine would still have (just) won with the corrected Danish score. We’re not ignoring it, don’t worry. 🙂
Are we all gonna ignore the fact that australia actually won with the correct danish votes?!?!? No? Oh right cuz its political and thats why ukraine should be kept the winner? Ah okay. Cool cool. Never watching this again
What bushit. ‘well deserved’? I don’t think so. What a ghastly taste the Danes have, not only with Australia, but mainly Belgium nonsense, Netherlands most boring song-ever! Her ‘mistake’ was blessed, as it produced a better result! and not an embarrassing one..
Haha, that reminds me: The UK public vote this year gave the most votes to Lithuania. Pretty young man; okay song. Works every time. 😀
@Schmuck HA! Lithuania? Please, if you like Lithuania over Ukraine you have no musical credibility lol!
For those who were saying that the Russian entry was dated… the winning song is like one of those ethnic jams from the early 2000´s. Anyway, Congratulations to Ukraine, Sweden will make a wonderful show in 2017.
@Jai
She also admitted it is about 2014 in Crimea
I have to say this years winner was shocking. It is the type of song that give Euroivison a bad name. Just when I was starting to think, winning songs were becoming mainstream pop that the masses would love like Heroes. Euphoria, Only Teardrops etc Then we have this dross. It is very very sad. Australia would have been a far more worthy winner and I suspect the juries know this. They may have damaged Eurovision.
This is another reason to say that juries are so unprofessional. It is so so sad.
JURIES need to be realy experts, not random people like Anton from Sweden – boy who can’t sing… now I am not surprised that Azerbaijan got 10 points from Sweden… such a joke
@Schmuck I think your username describes you well. Just because YOU don’t like a song it doesn’t mean that song is bad. Jury voting aside, Jamala also did very well with the televote. Her song was the favorite of many people, myself included. That song was full of emotion, if you find it ‘boring’, that says more about you than it does the song. Also to everyone whining about the song being political, get over it, the EBU rejected those complaints. The song is about her family being forcibly deported from Ukraine by the Soviets, a mass deportation which killed… Read more »
?ne mistake twice? It’s time to retire
Juries are a bad joke. They don’t know anything about music and current trends.
Juries must be producers and people from the radio, and the number of juries should increase.
Belgium beated Ukraine in the semifinal, but suddenly in the final Jamala got around 100 points over Laura.. so awkward, and it’s no the first time that something like this is happening.
Schmuck, a screaming cat is more pleasure than this song. In fact, the song sounds like a dental drill while you’re having a migraine and someone is scratching a blackboard with a fork.
But actually I could see this coming, as we a) every winner usually goes into a completely different direction than the previous and b) Eurovision under the rule of Taurus do not give us catchy winners like Eurovision under the rule of Gemini.
Maybe another 20 juries would like to admit they were wrong?