On early Sunday morning the full voting results were revealed by the EBU and with it came the shock announcement that the jury votes for FYR Macedonia and Montenegro had been excluded, with the EBU reverting to each country’s televote for 100% of the vote.
The EBU issued this statement:
The jury results of F.Y.R. Macedonia and Montenegro for the Grand Final have been excluded after consultation of PwC, the contest’s independent voting observer, and upon the decision of the Executive Supervisor and the Chairman of the Reference Group.
In both countries, televoting applied for 100%. The exclusion of two juries will be further discussed in the next Reference Group meeting in June.
This follows a jury voting scandal in 2014 when it was discovered the Georgian jury had ranked their top eight songs identically – statistically improbable. The Georgian jury vote was discounted and the televote alone was used.
Hey there! I’ve been reading your weblog for a while now and
finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Humble Texas!
Just wanted to mention keep up the fantastic job!
i had written about ITALY’s winning minutes before the final voting started. I heard it from trustful resources and wanted to greet them but when the sweeden came 1st i was pretty surprised. This showed the unjustice of voting system once again. ESC has to be ashamed of not counting milions of ppl votes.
>juries shouldn’t overwrite the people’s opinion.
Everyone keeps saying this.
But that’s the juries’ job. To temper the whims of the ignorant masses, such as those who thought Albania sang OK.
It’s not going to change. Several countries in Western Europe will drop out if it does, and the EBU knows it, so y’all might as well cool your jets.
“They’ll stop novelty acts from winning” Whether novelty acts are good or bad is subjective, but juries shouldn’t overwrite the people’s opinion. The winner should obviously be the people’s favorite.
I’m very proud in the European public for choosing Italy, you’d think it would be the other way around, a jury picking a sophisticated song while the public becomes blinded by a silly Swedish cartoon, but no. This proves that the public can and should make all othe the decisions.
To that person saying “Sweden won and that’s final” No it’s not. Sweden did not win. Sweden won over a couple of people, while Italy was Europe’s FAVORITE. Italy was Europe’s WINNER. The people voted and their vote was USELESS because of the jury.
Robin stjänberg won the televote but came 5th cuz of the jury nothing new here thats how the system works deal with it. my favorite was austrailia but you morons talk about italy i love opera but that song was so boring among the other boring ballads this year. there was only 3 uptempo songs this year do you really think a jury would have favored a ballad when 97% of the songs are ballads.
there job is to reward the original songs this year uptempo was original.
“Vote for Eurovision. Your vote is important. Every vote counts. Support these countries.”
– the hosts at the final.
OH YES?? Are you sure?
36milions people votes for Italy.
Result? Sweden wins and Italy is ranked 3rd, not even 2nd!
The right word here is “ROBBED” guys.
They robbed il Volo and they also robbed the people all over Europe who voted for them.
Yes Sweden might have won ( thanks to the judges ) but it was IL VOLO / ITALY with GRANDE AMORE that won the people’s hearts on the night ! not just by the televiewers but also but the crowds in the arena ! the people have voted very clearly as to what type of music they want to hear !
Thank you IL VOLO , you have brought back class and style back to Eurovision !
Is that one person screaming about Italy being the winner. I bet quite a majority would disagree with this.
The winner is Sweden. That is how it was announced. Full stop.
Strange. All the jury members from AZE placed ARM 26th and ARM placed AZE 26th also. That’s also cheating. I wnat #fairplay at Eurovision!
@ESCaddict I think there’s some problem with juries … how can a technical jury, that has to judge quality, give 1st place to Sweden and 6th to Italy?
Is Sweden, in quality and technique, better than Italy this year?
It’s unthinkable …
I don’t understand why those countries do those stupid things…
They don’t feel shame??
It’s obvious when all of them vote the same -_-
Italy was robbed by the juries and seriously even if just one person from the EBU or in general come out and say to keep calm it’s not a big deal and that juries didn’t robbed anyone i’m gonna punch them in the face because this song, these voices and generally everything about the Italian act this year deserved to win.
Let’s pretend for a second that juries should have a say in this. However, things should change, in favor of televoters. What if all the results of televoting are quantified and each country is awarded points directly proportional with the amount of votes they had throughout Europe (and Australia). Something like the voting procedure in Melodifestivalen. Then, the votes of the juries would be presented like we are used to, for each country, with the same 1 to 12 points. I suppose, with a decent margin, the televotes would have an advantage and the juries could also work their magic… Read more »
EBU change the rules to every countries get points like from 1971 to 1973, and incraase member of juries like in past 16 members in 4 different ages group and 2 female and 2 male in each group.
@ESCaddict
Adding that new category “Possible future hit” means that they have closed the door to the countries without voting blocks/large diaspora, who were targetting older voters (in the wake of last year’s 1&2). You are right that scandi pop will move to the fore, but it also means that the “peace & love” brigade from the other voting block will also become more prominent. Expect a two-horse race from now on…..
EXCLUDE ALL OF THE JURIES & ANNOUNCE ITALY AS THE WINNER. THE VIEWERS HAVE BEEN ROBBED!
Juries have an important role to play. They will stop novelty acts from winning. Juries need to managed properly & EBU seems to try. It is not any easy thing to do. I have to add that “Future Potential Hit” is a very bad judging criteria. This explains why songs like Italy’s are buried by the juries. It also explains why plastic pop songs like Sweden’s Heroes do well. Remove that category now or we will just be over run with Scandi pop. A little is always welcome but ESC should have diverse music and that category will destroy the… Read more »
“Juries … Albania would’ve come in 9th withut them.”
There’s your proof that the juries are a feature, not a bug. They’re there to save Eurovision fans from themselves.
personally, I loved Russia and prefered her to win.
BUT Italy won the televote aka millions of people recognized the quality of great Vocals and beautiful national language as well as a powerful song.
Juries should be professionals but still can’t distinguish between quality & overhype.Every year there is a scandal with the juries and someone is suspended.PLEASE EBU, PUT THE JURIES TO REST.THEY ARE CORRUPTED AND NOT NEEDED.
Every year, music professionals bang on about singing in your own language, the joys of local culture reflected in the songs, and on and on and on. But when they get the chance to vote in a jury, the same snobbish a-holes choose a Swede singing an average pop song that could have come from anywhere and not in Swedish but in English. In contrast, they completely ignore the countries that do sing in the national language and with a great deal of national colorization. A horrible but sadly typical example from last night is Iceland, whose jury awarded the… Read more »
Of course song and voice must be judged. But many eurovision-songs are just for Eurovision. I thought Grande Amore and last years Rise like a phoenix was those kind of songs, that’s all.
Måns had the package including a “possible future hit”. I’m glad and surprised at the same time that Sweden won the jury voting. I’m glad that not only voice and song is the only thing they judge. That they have looked at the whole picture this time. Then Sweden was really the best in my opinion. Grande Amore was only for Eurovision and Il Volo have their success already. Maybe that have something to do with it not scoring that high as well.
Or now is the time for EBU to scrap jury votes until they can fix the voting system that consists of jury+televotes. Besides, most of the controversy in voting comes from the juries and yes, even the bloc/political vote this year are mostly products of the juries if we consult the split voting. The televoters are not as close-minded as we think they are. They actually choose a song because they like it and they won’t mind if it’s a Russian or a Swedish song because they know the songs and the singers have no direct association with the government… Read more »
It’s a normal thing in FYROM. Remember Skopje Fest 2014-15 when 5 people were arrested in connection with trying to rig the vote in favour of Daniel Kajmakoski?
Montenegro did the same thing last year as well. I think.
The juries need a larger sample size. They could even do like the wiwijury and eliminate the statistical outliers, which would ensure a more representative result.
I agree with many. Now that Eurovision has maturated a bit, we don’t need that few “professionals” telling us what’s the “best”. Professionals that follow I don’t know which criteria. They should be kind of homogeneous if they are experts in music and all that, but when (for example in Latvian jury) two people rank the same country 1st and 26th, one thinks: WTF? There is something personal in there… Moreover, I don’t like the course the festival is taking: they decide for us the running order, the voting order, they put canned applause… all to “improve the show” following… Read more »
Agree @Lucia
I think they should at least ADRESS that they won the televote, and not keep pretending that Sweden was the big winner everyone thinks it was
Calm down people. We CAN’T have a 100% jury or 100% televote system – neither is fair. A 50/50 is the best way to go.
Is wiwibloggs gonna keep pretending that Italy wasn’t robbed or what? It’s not just that it won the televote, it’s that it won the televote and it also happened to be the best technically/musically speaking, which is the criteria the juries should’ve used (yes, including “next future hit”, because Grande Amore is already a hit); yet the juries dragged it down in favor of Sweden, when Måns had issues according to press reports and Måns himself.
Can we all just talk about how Albania did so well with televotes but so bad with jury. I mean,her performance could have not been good,but i dont think it was bad enough to rank her last.
It’s really funny how everyone’s so mad about the juries destroying Italy. That was such a relief for me as Italy was my least favourite song this whole year. Thankfully the juries destroyed it like they should’ve, and also helped out Latvia and Norway. Sadly, they did destroy Estonia though, which unlike Italy, didn’t deserve that.
@Rhys: You better calm down, we all know this site is biased against Italy.
I am SHOCKED with the result for ITALY(winner), Spain (this should be at least in top 10), Slovenia, Albania( 9th with televotes), Estonia (2nd for me), and who are those JURIES than give the victory to an artist that cannot be creative in his own, Sweden( thnx EBU and money , hope you are not a Second Azerbaijan).
i think we definitely need some new faces in the EBU. Jon Ola Sand and Christer Bjorkman are ultimately the reasons for this dominant scandi block. I wouldn’t be surprised if Christer Bjorkman’s got links to a few jurors too.
There is no such thing as a perfect system. The one we have since 2009 was figured out to stop big problems that were ruining the contest: bloc voting and diaspora voting. In these six years it has proved to be efficient stopping many injustices. The quality of the music has increased significantly, the novelty acts are water under the bridge, and voting is not as predictable as it used to be. Those are facts. Of course it all has a dark side: when the system harms those entries we like better. Juries votes are not always as fair and… Read more »
Jesus dramatic much. Never read comments from so many prima donnas before.
Calm down petals or you’ll ruin your mascara with your tears of frustration.
GJ people! <3
yeah the juries have been rubbish anyway, they ended being more politcal then the televoters. Italy would have won and Albania would have come 9th without them….. Time to let the juries go
Hey people, I think I know why Sweden won the jury. There was a new judging criteria this year which was “Possible Future Hit” and obviously Sweden together with Belgium would have won that.
Where you see the scandal wiwiblog??? The only scandal in eurovision is that exist jury! This is the problem! The people around the europe spend a lot of money to support their favourite song and is a stupid jury which change completely the results! THIS IS THE SCANDAL misters and ladies in wiwiblog! And for that all of you should do something! The juries should disappear from esc!! Ridiculous!!!!!!!! A lot of us are not going to vote and watch again esc until this situation to change! ++these days will run an action with signatures to stop this situation! Everybody… Read more »
I think that every country where this happens should be banned for a year. Should have happened with Georgia too last year. Jury votes are not always bad, they always have two sides. This year, they dragged down Italy who clearly deserved to be the winner and not only 6th place. On the other hand, the juries also stopped huge diaspora voting (e.g. 12 points from Switzerland to Albania…). Therefore, every sign of vote fraud has to have consequences and the EBU really has to ban the countries for at least one year, otherwise their credibility further decreases.
People shouting about Italy. Remember 2011? The juries totally favored Italy. They won the jury vote and came 11th in the televote – and therefore they finished 2nd. Using your logic, they totally robbed all the other contestants that finished higher in the televote. Sometimes you loose among the juries, sometimes you win. Deal with it.
@Euphoria: May I add that neither Austria nor Germany got 0 points with the Jury. In fact according to the Jury Austria should have achieved 40 Points. WhilenI do think that the Jury robbed Italy, I also think that they did a great job at destroying Finland ( Thank god.or otherwise it would have qualified with just televoting ) and lowering the huge diaspora of countries such as Armenia and Poland.
It’s interesting to see that Italy went on some juries tally from the 15th place below. I mean, really? Those voices weren’t good enough for your ears, juries? Really? Their fierce showing wasn’t gimmicky enough? Juries, wtf? Italy probably IS the winner of this year’s ESC. And now, I am more than i favor of abandoning this jury system IN TOTAL! Just televote. People know what good music is, no matter their diaspora or friendly ties. Last year, both The Netherlands & Austria were on the same places in the jury and televote tally. Western Europe should not be afraid… Read more »
Shame on jurors. Italy is the real winner.
How about writing about THE scandal this year – robbing Italy of it’s victory? The juries are the ones biased, just look at their voting. It is ridiculously obvious why they placed Italy so low, to prevent it from winning, because the quality of the song is without doubt higher. Besides, what’s the point of juries, when really original songs like Germany and Austria get zero points???? This year is a disgrace. Juries voting regarding the bookings favorite or for neighboring countries. Europe was united on ITALY being the best, unfortunately the cheap gimmicks and plastic repetitiveness, looks, empty packaging… Read more »
full grand final on youtube
http://sh.st/kz4GS
LOL I think every country should have excluded the jury votes. No professional jury would have given Italy that amount of points. How about you investiagate that PwC! And why do you make people waste their money when their voice don’t get heard? Millions of Voices were shut up with that verdict! Just saying.
@ LovelyIrishPetal
Yes, you are right, I made a mistake, I was writing about 2011.
When it comes to Malta – i didnt know that. If it is true than maybe it is a problem of some small countries. Or maybe it is still a coincidence.