For many Eurovision fans it is one of the greatest nights of the year.
But for Israeli Eurovision broadcaster KAN the live broadcast of Semi-Final 1 almost turned into a disaster.
That’s because the broadcaster suffered a cyber attack during streaming of the Semi-Final online.
Anti-Israeli messages appeared, disrupting the live feed of the show from Tel Aviv.
KAN had introduced the online stream to make the show more accessible.
Speaking to Ynet, the broadcaster confirms the cyber attack was “quickly” corrected.
As the attack was focused on the online broadcast, the primary broadcast through television was unaffected.
Madonna in Israel for Eurovision
In happier news for KAN, Madonna has tonight landed in Tel Aviv ahead of her slated performance at the grand final.
The Jerusalem Post reports the “Hung Up” hitmaker landed on billionaire Sylvan Adams’ private jet.
If the EBU is to be believed her performance may be in doubt. That’s because they are yet to have signed a contract with the performer. Without the contract she won’t be able to perform on stage.
Contract or no contract, it appears Madonna is in Israel at least.
The contest will continue with the live broadcast of Semi-Final 2 on Thursday night from the Expo Tel Aviv.
Tonight the first ten qualifiers for the Grand Final were revealed.
They are: Greece, Belarus, Serbia, Cyprus, Estonia, Czech Republic, Australia, Iceland, San Marino and Slovenia.
They join the six automatic qualifiers: Israel, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
GET MORE EUROVISION 2019 NEWS HERE
So far the only thing I am enjoying are the postcards. Male hosts are both annoying with their easy jokes. And we still have to see Netta ‘singing’ one more time…
Please, join the petition! Not only for Portugal and Hungary but for all countries that suffered from injustice last night and to prevent more problems tomorrow and Saturday. Some people were unable to vote for their favorite countries. In some contries, a lot of people got the message “error” while calling to vote for their favorites. Their votes didn’t count!!
https://www.change.org/p/eurovision-recount-eurovision-2019-first-semifinal
Portugal wore PS colours with Arabic archs exploding in red. Do you think Israelis and EBU are stupid and blind? Forget it. Portugal is out of the competition but forever in our hearts
Eurovision is a game. You are to serious, take it easy
Portugal didn’t qualify just because people didn’t like it. Iceland qualified.
Anyone know what happened with the last few minutes of the BBC Four feed?
It went down for a few minutes. Three UK tabloids have reported about it, but so far no-one knows precisely why or how it happened. Some Twitter fans were furious at the BBC over it. One suggested that Channel 4 take over the broadcasting next year. Let’s see if Scott and Rylan mention it during the Semi Final 2 commentary. 🙂
Yes it was great show yesterday , more to come I hope. The postcards were original and great, interval acts and presenters all are pretty good . loved the presentations. In particular I really like the mash up of previous Eurovision clips into one remix. Loved that, and the postcards creating Aba Na Bi remix . Overall KAN are putting a good show on which they should be proud of. Just hope their govt doesn’t intervene with a tad too much hidden propaganda . It spoils things which we don’t need.
Can you cite one example of the government intervening with “hidden propaganda”? You’re worrying about something that isn’t real. Is there even such a thing as “hidden propaganda”? It seems like an oxymoron.
If San Marino qualified then even my cat can! Come one – he was off key for all the first chorus at least! Are tele-voters deaf?!!
he deserved it ngl
I secretly want San Marino to win, one of my biggest guilty pleasures. VALENTINA’S BACKYARD 2020
Such things happen when kan wants to be in charge of everything and even being mentioned on the live show, something that hasn’t happened the last decade
That was just the first semi final, the success of an event is considered after its end.
Exitoso? Tu que fumas?
No fuma nada, solo dice la verdad
it was just streaming, no inrterfeance in actual broadcast
Yes also with this really crazy results this year I thought that this has to do with some irregular things.
Hungary, Poland, Belgium,Portugal should be in the final – others who cant sing at all not. I m happy for San Marino but the guy can simply not sing – same with this screaming performance from Island.
Otherwise a great show. Cant understand all the complaint about the camera work. It was very fine.
Dana International was the highlight for me.
I’m quite surprised Hungary missed the cut, but not so much about Belgium. Eliot’s live vocals were really disappointing.
Plenty of succesfull Eurovision artists were going to school while participating. The age limit is set at 16, not at a college degree.
I think Belgium had the right song choice . The song was just too big for Eliot. A stronger more mature performer would have given them successful qualification to the final. He did his best but it was obvious it was too big for him .
Were they the BDS fools?
Hmmmmm, is it Russia? Is it Hatari? Is it my granny? I expected more of their cyber security
Some countries were under attack too….Portugal, Poland, Belgium…
wait at what point did stuff start happening? I watched the livestream and didn’t notice anything strange…
same here, I was watching the live stream from start to finish and didn’t notice anything. the full live stream is also available on YouTube – they didn’t replace it with a new uploaded video like they had to do after the stage invasion last year.
I think the target was the KAN stream not the one in YouTube.
Well we’ve got a problem when we were watching ESC on TVs our beloved Artur Orzech was constantly disconnected so yea ? maybe it was only for TV audience who knows
Glad it didn’t affect the live broadcasting! I fear that something will happen in the final but i know that Israeli security is tight…
About Madonna: wtf they havent signed a contract yet?? is it because she hasn’t made up her mind?
Supposedly she’s now asking for even more money and is making demands about which songs she sings.
It s not Madonna herself who is responsible tor the organisation.
BTW she s not tailoring her costumes herself.
I think there were security reasons as well. Madonna and her kids were threatened several times when she wanted to perform in Israel which she did. As she loves the Country and likes the mystic way of the religion – Kabbala.
She will be fine with extra security, i am not sure this is the problem.
The money could be the problem. and her crazy demands
I hope we don’t see MARUV 2.0
Of course something would happen. It is Israel we are talking about!
This could happen:
1) Something might disrupt one or two of the entries in the grand final
2) They’ll go again at the end
3) Madonna will be stood down to make time for 2)
Have you watched the press conference of the semi final 1 qualifiers?
I think that something is coming due to Hatari’s answers…
I have a feeling that Iceland somehow will not take part in Grand Final…
What did they say? No Iceland, no point.
Indeed, that was most mysterious from Iceland at the press conference. When asked what they would change for Saturday’s performance, Klemens looked down and disheartened; he then said stuttering that he didn’t think he could answer that question, because it would be too controversial??! Something’s going on there.
Quite honestly he needs to focus on getting the vocals right rather than engaging in any stupid stunts. Both he and Matthías seemed strangely nervous tonight: timing issues from Matthías and some quite dreadful caterwauling from Klemens.
Hatari used that answer in multiple occasions to answer multiple questions. I don’t think it really means something, I guess it’s just part of the image they are portraying.
I didn’t like this arrogant behavior
They are making the people around them very uncomfortable. That’s the main thing about the Press Conference I figured out. When the presenter turned to him he did those clicks. Like, what are we supposed to do with those clicks? Click back at you? You could see on the faces of the other singers they were tired of Hatari’s behavior and felt awkward and tense.
That’s true, even always-happy Serhat seemed somewhat annoyed by it when they were doing the draw
Have you guys noticed that after Iceland finished their performance, the camera immediately moved away from them and in 2 seconds to the Estonian postcard?
It’s like the producers or something were afraid Hatari would do something on stage so they didn’t want to show it
Any other act got a few seconds to thank the audience
If they want to do something controversial on stage, I’d like it to be politics-free and not something which may disqualify them
By Aftonbladet (Swedish news website), EBU caught them for a chitchat and told them that they reached the limit enough for EBU since they still continued with the politic provocations inside the host country (You watched their press conference after their rehearsals, right?).
Source: https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/melodifestivalen/a/Jo7b84/beskedet-fran-ebu-gransen-ar-nadd (And don’t forget to use ‘translate’ if you don’t know Swedish)
It’s only a strategy to make people talk about them
Was BBC the only country to lose connection at the end of the show? During the recap of the qualifiers transmission cut out during Belarus, so we didn’t see the last 8 finalists recap or end of the show.
Indeed Simon, this appears to have only affected the BBC in some regions. There is an article by the Express about it, here: https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1127238/Eurovision-2019-semi-final-technical-difficulties-cut-off-results-odds-BBC-video
Omg, british people must have been shookth when they heard about who qualified after they were gone.
Haha, no. I think it is more likely that the feed only had a limited amount of digital time allocated to it. As some have already noted, it blacked out on the exact second when the programme was meant to finish – that suggests that it was either a basic input error or a problem with satellite time.
But if a cable was pulled, who would do that? A Conan fan? 😛
Oh my god, me and my mum thought something terrible had happened until the message appeared saying it was just a resolvable, technical problem. Bloody heart attack, it gave me.
is it because israel is pretty bad with palestina? that what they say
Very sad about the cyber-attack, but it was also very predictable, and it appears to have been handled. Deep breath.
The terrorists show again their ugly faces. It’s so ugly to attack the accessibility channels.
It’s good that the problem was fixed fast. The best answer to terror is the Eurovision fest that unified people from with music and love.
What is happening guys no live stream no live reaction from you guys nothing ,why the silence ???
They’re at the qualifiers press conference most likely.
Angus, Suzanne and others are currently sitting in the live qualifier’s press conference. Once that has finished, there might be a discussion later.
Hi! Apologies but wifi failed in the press centre during broadcast so we couldn’t stream – hopefully this will be resolved before Thursday!
Thanks Angus. x