It’s been more than a month since Eurovision 2018, but Romania still has not gotten over the fact that The Humans failed to qualify for the Grand Final. In a TVR Board meeting behind closed doors last week, the management of the Romanian state broadcaster demanded sanctions and resignations over what is perceived as a national embarrassment in the Centennial Year.

Last month, The Humans tanked in the Second Semi-final, when their song “Goodbye” failed to advance Romania to the Grand Final for the first time since the introduction of the semi-finals. In their monthly meeting last week, TVR’s management discussed this unprecedented situation, and information about what was discussed has just transpired to the press.

Despite the fact that the TVR Board of Directors met behind closed doors and all talks were supposed to remain a secret, press monitoring agency Pagina de Media obtained relevant details from the TVR staff members who were verbally informed about the outcome of the meeting. Let’s break it down!

The Board members were especially disappointed with the fact that TVR shifted the blame on televoting issues in other countries. Instead of accepting responsibility for the non-qualification, Romania’s state broadcaster exclusively pointed the finger at the fact that several telecom operators in Germany and Italy were down during the televoting in the Second Semi-final, effectively blaming the result on the faulty diaspora vote.

We should note that TVR was not blamed for sending The Humans’ song “Goodbye” to Lisbon. That was indeed the viewers’ exclusive choice, at the National Final of Selectia Nationala 2018, however unpopular it may have been among Eurovision fans at the time.

TVR Board makes recommendations for the future

Most importantly, the TVR Board considered that the show in Lisbon did not meet the level of the Eurovision Song Contest, as far as the concept, choreography and costumes were concerned. As a result, they recommended that the outside persons involved in the show not be used in the future. Moreover, some members of the board asked for “resignations and/or sanctions” in order to prevent similar situations in the future.

Some Board members expressed their wish for TVR to involve an artistic director in the future shows, even from outside the broadcaster. Moreover, “good strategies and consistent investment” would be needed to avoid non-qualification, considering that “some countries invested in excess of 1,000,000 Euro for their shows in the past”. Also, each member of Romania’s Delegation will have to be assigned clear responsibilities, so that the result can be easily broken down.

An official report regarding Romania’s participation in Eurovision 2018 will be presented to the TVR Board as soon as the financial report is finalised. According to the same source mentioned above, the management stated that the report will have to be thoroughly analysed prior to elaborating and approving the strategy for Eurovision 2019.

What do you think about the position the TVR Board? Do you agree that someone should resign and that other sanctions are in order? And what should TVR do in order to avoid non-qualification in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Read more Romania Eurovision news here

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jdplatt
jdplatt
5 years ago

It’s easy to point the finger at everyone else when something goes wrong. Truth is, the song was not competitive when this year was extremely competitive. There were plenty of songs left behind in both semi finals that I liked, especially in SF2 (e.g., Malta, Poland, Latvia). Romania needs to get back to the drawing board and work out the problems, but don’t blame Germany or Italy for the missteps. Come back next year with something competitive.

AurelianTamisan
AurelianTamisan
5 years ago

I don’t like the way are putting it. It’s ok to look for better options, to try to improve, but it’s a foolish thing to look for blame. What blame, for not reaching, finally, a final?! Maybe they should congratulate their work for past editions before that, cause Romania had pretty nice results, with a long streak of qualifications. To blame the performance, the staging? WTF, the performance and staging were great, without them Romania wouldn’t have came 11th but much lower. It is nobody’s fault that there was no artist or producer to come with a strong song in… Read more »

human melovina
human melovina
5 years ago

I sustained Romania before semifinal, trying to defend Humans. The song was good, a ’90 year old rock appreciate in American Idol, but unfortunately not in Eurovision. The public here wants something else. It hadn’t anything to do with this contest. You couldn’t qualify anyway when your song was for an other event. Luckily the performance and staging were very good, but that didn’t saved too much. They did the best they could. More than that it was not possible. They were good so many years, had good places. Loose one time in the history is not a shame. They… Read more »

CyxCy
CyxCy
5 years ago

They are crazy. It’s just a game. Breathe and drink water. Poor “Humans”, they made all they can do, but other contestants was good. Accept it.

AngieP
AngieP
5 years ago

Ok, Romania didn’t qualify because the song wasn’t good. That’s it! I hope they come back nex year with sth good, as they used to do until this year, and you’ll be back in the final.

adriana
adriana
5 years ago
Reply to  AngieP

Romania is the only country who took any risk in sending joke entries to Esc so my hats off to them,thanks to their joke entries they never failed to qualify and once they sent something serious they didnt qualified.See the irony on this :))

human melovina
human melovina
5 years ago
Reply to  adriana

adriana
Romania didn’t sent joke entries every year. I ask myself if you are Romanian. I saw that many of them were good, some very good, and two of them really made history. Two or three were weaker, but there were catchy and dancing and the Eurovision public like this. That’s why Romania qualified all these years.
This time it seems to be a song for some other show. So it is a good song, not a bad one, but it has nothing to do with Eurovision. Who had chosen it didn’t knew anything about this contest. Period.

Alex
Alex
5 years ago

Please don’t say goodbye to 2019 participation

VladCec
VladCec
5 years ago

Good. TVR blaming external issues with televoting was by far more embarassing than the 11th place in the semi. And, while they’re at it, maybe they’ll decide to stop showing the vote tally DURING the voting period. I’m fairly sure it had an important influence on the final result, given that Alexia & Matei were shown to be quite comfortably first from the beginning to the last time TVR showed the tally before closing the votes.

AurelianTamisan
AurelianTamisan
5 years ago
Reply to  VladCec

I totally agree, the voting is open a very long time (1 hour) and it is stupid to show intermediate results during the show, it totally influences the final vote. Now, I doubt that Alexia & Matei would have done a great performance, I’m tempted to say that they wouldn’t have qualified either. Maybe it would have been a viceversa result between televoting and juries, as I doubt that they would have been on top with televoting and I would have expected a low place with the juries. ‘Selectia Nationala’ simply didn’t have a ‘wow’ entry this year, it was… Read more »

Boycott Jerusalem 2019
Boycott Jerusalem 2019
5 years ago

Is the goal just to qualify to the finals? If they send too good of a song to the contest and win, they will have to deal with the hosting issues. So probably not qualifying is a good thing.

Ric
Ric
5 years ago

I Think the Romanian board is overreacting over an 11th place. But it is true that they should stop relying on the diaspora since they did get 12 points from the Italian televote and still it wasnt enough to go through. Anyway it is good to see that no country in untouchable so everybody Will have to up their game in the coming years.

Zappod
Zappod
5 years ago
Reply to  Bogdan Honciuc

I agree, just like Bulgaria stepped up their game after so many years of NQ-ing and just like Sweden did after the 2010 NQ

Julian
Julian
5 years ago

Jukebox would have been a better choice. But not Mihai Alexandru or Feli.

Juan Cena
Juan Cena
5 years ago

“Goodbye” always felt like it was only selected bits of a song, instead of a complete work.

EscAU
EscAU
5 years ago

maybe they shouldn’t have let the public choose a dodgy eastern european song from the 80s in the first place?

Briekimchi
Briekimchi
5 years ago

A slight overreaction to coming 11th in a semi-final.

To me, Romania was a shock non-qualifier but they happen every year. There was nothing wrong with the song or the performance. “Goodbye” was much better than some other songs that Romania have sent that have qualified in the past.

I hope Azerbaijan do not react the same way!

AurelianTamisan
AurelianTamisan
5 years ago
Reply to  Briekimchi

I totally agree with you, I remember Elena Gheorghe’s “Balkan Girls”, with a weak song and weak performance, or the weak performance from Mandinga. There Romania was lucky to qualify, this time the opposite happened .

Briekimchi
Briekimchi
5 years ago

Good examples!
The first one that immediately came to mind for me was Voltaj but yes, those two as well!

human melovina
human melovina
5 years ago
Reply to  Briekimchi

Balkan Girls was interesting. Mandinga indeed was chip but catchy, and these kind of songs are likable for the Eurovision public. Mandinga, yes you could say it was lucky.
For Voltaj…no he wasn’t just lucky. Voltaj was actually amazing. He deserved to qualify, as he deserved the 15th place in the final. There were others better than him. It was unjust for Il Volo. They deserved to win.

Katy
Katy
5 years ago

Send Feli internally or give her multiple song NF. It’s not a rocket science…

VladCec
VladCec
5 years ago
Reply to  Bogdan Honciuc

I know about the loss of her father during the selection, but was there also something else? IMO her semi final performance was amazing, but the language change and staging I though were both a mess in the final.

Gav
Gav
5 years ago

This is ridiculous. Punishing the artists who put their energy into this. I think it’s one of the most effectively designed performances this year. I loved the performance and the song grew on me.

I think they should congratulate themselves on a good show personally. I love rewatching and it’s the best Romanian entry in my opinion for a while.

Möhrant
Möhrant
5 years ago

It’s a bit of sore loser scenario to blame televoting failing to get their diaspora vote. Especially when Romania already got a full 24 points from Moldova in that semi-final (conveniently…).

Ariso Light
Ariso Light
5 years ago

Maybe the board should stop being such sore losers. Demanding resignations and sanctions from some staff is rediculous and humanly wrong.

TheBoyNextDoor
TheBoyNextDoor
5 years ago

Wow so much drama I love it

Herr Frau
Herr Frau
5 years ago

They should’ve demanded resignations for the idiots that have been torturing British fans since the early 00s. After 1 non-qualification you demand resignations, just send someone better next time. You have better options in your NF

Kris
Kris
5 years ago

I like that Romania is taking this very seriously but the EBU can’t always save them from non-qualifications by disqualifying their middle of the road/bad entries. The real question to solve here is how come Humans won the televote over Say Feli or JUKEBOX their original group.

Arguably Jukebox had the more immediate song and Bella even had great and equally good if not better vocals.

Andr
Andr
5 years ago
Reply to  Kris

In my personal opinion as a romanian Jukebox should have changed the staging in the final,they just had the same concept from the semi.It worked great there but something exciting was missing to give them an extra push to the victory.Otherwise the song and the live performance where good.Also there’s an important part of the romanian SN public that doesn’t really agree to sending a song in romanian.A shame as we have quite a melodic language.Feli on the other hand switched to english before the final,a decent version but not as good as the original in my opinion.But what really… Read more »

Jo.
Jo.
5 years ago

Send a better song next year.

Alex
Alex
5 years ago

Sorry but you must be naive thinking that the Romanian public that watches Eurovision voted for Humans and not the other two big pre-favorite songs! Humans is not bad but it is extremely bland and the group is unknown in the country. I guess the televoting was rigged a bit (not a surprise in a Balkan/eastern country). Also, coming 11th is not ‘tanking’ but borderline. They were pushed by juries though. It’s a shame they blamed it on an assuming failure of televoting, lol.. is this for real? they sound like bitter fans. Would they listen to the song?

Yaa
Yaa
5 years ago

I am Romanian, I did not vote for The Humans in the National selection but I grew some respect for them because of the suicide theme and the singers voice. The staging, outfits, live performance made me proud, it wasn’t instant appeal but it was quality. The problem is I adored Hungary’s entry, voted for it 20 times, so did many of my fellows, Hungary got 10 points Romanian televote, after Moldova, of course, and they were in and we were out with only 4 points behind. I kinda knew it was us versus them, Hungary is Romania’s tradicional enemy,… Read more »

Yaa
Yaa
5 years ago
Reply to  Yaa

Hungary was number 10 Q, only 4 points up Romania, but it was deserved.

KESC
KESC
5 years ago

Goodbye wasn’t good enough to qualify, they should be happy that they ended on 11th place. If they would’ve send Feli, she would’ve probably qualified.
Sometimes it’s better to accept mistakes and to look where the problem was instead of crying.

John Moynahan
John Moynahan
5 years ago

If Romania thought they have been hard done by, what would they think if they had been drawn in semi-final 1?
They had undoubtedly the easier semifinal to compete in.
They came 11th and just missed out on qualification
It was a poor song and messy staging
Just look at what good staging can do for an ordinary song…ie Moldova, Ireland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Cyprus etc
Complacency brings its own rewards!

Darren
Darren
5 years ago

Not every country can qualify to the final EVERY year, regardless of what they send. Thankfully, this year changed that, and not before time really if you ask me. I was so over Romania, Russia, Azerbaijan etc sending some very questionable entries yet still qualifying every year. Romania didn’t deserve to qualify this year and they didn’t. It’s hardly a national scandal. Just try harder next year.
Jeez, if only Ireland, Switzerland, FYR Macedonia and a few others could be that lucky to only fail to qualify once.

Johann
Johann
5 years ago

11th in Semi 2 by four points … this reaction seems overly-dramatic and I would not call this “tanking.”

Denis
Denis
5 years ago

Point the finger to where the actual fault is: the audience. A clear example that sometimes the audience doesn’t know the best. Why fire staff for something that’s not thier fault?
If your’e going to make a tour even longer than MF that at least have the material for it. Next year involve jury to balance the voting, stronger song selection and shorter process you see the change

AurelianTamisan
AurelianTamisan
5 years ago
Reply to  Bogdan Honciuc

In my opinion, the Romanian jury was absolutely professional this year. With some exceptions, some moments, they have chosen exactly what I would have. I would be curious if you can give me more than 1 or 2 examples of potential other songs into the final, cause I didn’t find more. Let’s be honest, a lot of people talked about ‘Safari’ not reaching the final. Yeah, the song looked ‘amazing’ with the studio version, however you can’t qualify with the live performance Serena had in the semi-final. And the selection was simply weak, there was no great song entered, this… Read more »

Polegend Godgarina
Polegend Godgarina
5 years ago

The public 100% decided who to send in the final… let’s not act like there’s staff to blame.

AurelianTamisan
AurelianTamisan
5 years ago
Reply to  Bogdan Honciuc

Yeah, there is a problem with a national selection when there is such a small number of voters. I remember that last place didn’t get 100 votes, WTF, just with family and friends you should easily get over 100. So, either they should promote the national selection more, either they should go for an internal selection process. But I don’t agree about the staging, I think the staging won a top 10 place in the jury’s table, otherwise Romania would have finished much lower than 11th. It was hard to choose a better staging for such a song, cause the… Read more »

Gobio
Gobio
5 years ago

The new selection is to blame imo. You can’t have your own melfeset unless you have the materials and songs to do it, just go with a small selection that is far more approachable, and have both juries and televote in all shows, don’t try to force unnecessary concepts.

AQcarpatica
AQcarpatica
5 years ago

This is a good attitude from the board members. I can only hope things will change but I’m very pessimistic

Tomas Davitt
Tomas Davitt
5 years ago

I think its unfair that the staff are being fired – its the Romanian public’s fault for choosing a really poor song when there were some decent ones in there.
This is the worst song that Romania has sent for quite a while

human melovina
human melovina
5 years ago
Reply to  Bogdan Honciuc

That’s right. They could use the money to promote the song and make more shows in more countries and more cities. One of the biggest artist in Romania said that she didn’t knew this song before watching the Eurovision. The song should be on the radio and promoted online (most important). You are leaving in an international song contest and a small group know your song. Even most people from your country don’t have any idea about it. So they should do one show for the public and the rest of the money could be used for promotion of the… Read more »

esc1234
esc1234
5 years ago

Oh i love how they want to work on this and how passionate they are. I think that they will fix this and they will win the next years, they deserve it, romania is a powerhouse in Eurovision

Alex
Alex
5 years ago

I think Romania should improve their Melodifestivalen… Er I mean Selectia Nationala by bringing an international jury

Efraim
Efraim
5 years ago

Lucky you Romania… at least you have a public TV station with room for self-criticism… which is already more than we Spaniards can say about ours.