He just can’t get enough of Eurovision this year! Having served as Contest Producer of Eurovision 2016, Christer Björkman now moves into a new role for Junior Eurovision 2016. This time he’ll be acting as one of three “expert judges”. These judges, announced today by the EBU, have been brought in to help with the voting at this year’s contest.
Christer Björkman interviewed at Melodifestivalen 2016
Christer obviously has a wealth of Eurovision experience behind him.
Not only has he produced the contest, he also participated in 1992.
But that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of his involvement with Melodifestivalen or the EBU Reference Group. That, to us at least, means he’s more than equipped to be called an “expert” on Eurovision. Perhaps the expert would be better?
Also joining Christer as one of the expert jurors will be Mads Grimstad from Universal Music Denmark. The third juror will be announced in due course. Importantly, both Björkman and Grimstad are based in countries not competing in this year’s Junior Eurovision. With no national pride at stake, that should allow for a completely impartial set of votes.
The EBU have also clarified how the voting will work, including these three new judges. As previously reported, each country will have an adult jury and a kids jury. The votes will be combined 50/50 to give that country’s vote. That will give us 17 votes, followed by the three expert jury votes. Each juror will give their own set of votes, from 1-12 in the usual scoring format. This will give us a total of 20 votes which will decide the winner of the contest.
In effect, this means that each expert juror has the same weight as just one country. They will not have any greater influence than that on the final result. We’ll bring you news of who the third expert judge is when we have word from the EBU.
What do you think of the introduction of the expert judges to Junior Eurovision? Do you think Christer Björkman is a good fit for the role? Let us know in the comments section below!
@I Am Not Jamala
As mentioned by the article, Christer has been a producer for the adult version for years now so his qualifications more than suffice.
@SJ:
Considering that this is the first time they’ll use such jurors, there is no evidence of them leaning to voting “western countries”.
I wonder if this had anything to do with Sweden not returning to Jesc this year? After all, SVT said that they planned to take a one-year-break from the contest and it’s been two years now.
Yes, “expertise”…
Ready for Australia to casually snatch 12 points from them.
Boooo! This guy came 18th at Eurovision himself, so why should he be judging acts?
Expert juries will always vote for western countries . Much points every year for Malta, Australia, The Netherlands , Italy, Israel and from east will gets points only Ukraine, Armenia and if they come back Azerbaijan
LOL
I like the idea 🙂 Televoting would be better tho…
Good move. After all there isn’t enough Swedish influence in eurovision.
Christer won’t give any points to Russia :/
If Sweden or Denmark were competing they probably wouldn’t be ask to vote because of impartiality.
Why do we need these 3 extra votes? What’s the point here?