Eurovision 2024: Malmö Calling

[johnnyboy]

12 minutes ago, Rob Lowe said:

How about UK getting 0 in the televote?! Were we the only ones who got a zero?

I'm pretty sure it was.  In the 4 Eurovisions this decade we've had 0 in televotes twice, single figures once, and Sam Ryder.  The detailed results will be out shortly which give a better view of how close it was to picking up anything.

[johnnyboy]

9 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

The detailed results will be out shortly which give a better view of how close it was to picking up anything.

Not very.  In the jury vote the UK had 2x 11th places, which is the first non-point scoring position.  In the televote the UK had 2x 14th places, so not really a sniff of any televoting points.

[Chili]

Glad Ireland did alright, glad Israel didn't win. Thought the winner was just ok. France or Croatia for me.

[Kamaras-Tash]

Nice to see Israel do well after all the shite that lass had to put up with this week, didn't watch it live but caught a few of the performances this morning the Uk entry was shocking. I used to like him in Years & Years as well so not sure what happened there.

[Devon Malcolm]

54 minutes ago, Kamaras-Tash said:

Nice to see Israel do well after all the shite that lass had to put up with this week

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, Kamaras-Tash said:

Nice to see Israel do well after all the shite that lass had to put up with this week

The standard misogynists were out in force I noticed, attacking the way she looks and wanting to punch her etc. She’s off to do her national service now so maybe she will find a nice bit of killing a bit less stressful. 

[garynysmon]

I thought the Ukrainian and Spanish entries were the best.

Genuinely bewildered what people saw in the winning Swiss one!

Edited May 12, 2024 by garynysmon

[SuperBacon]

18 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

Genuinely bewildered what people saw in the winning Swiss one!

Maybe they were mesmerised by the flag, as that's a big plus.

[Keith Houchen]

Just now, SuperBacon said:

Maybe they were mesmerised by the flag, as that's a big plus.

[Kamran]

14 hours ago, Rob Lowe said:

I imagine a lot of Pro Israel voters got a stick up their arse and mass voted. You could say bots but surely then they would have won. Or Russia would cheat to win every year.

 

I think if it was just the tele vote then Israel would have won but because the vote is split between the jury vote it is meant to reduce the impact of anything like that happening. I think the reason they ended up changing the tele/jury results in each country to the two-tier system in 2016 (rather than just 1 set of combined points) was to reduce the regional bias that Eurovision was often criticised for.

[Vamp]

14 hours ago, Rob Lowe said:

I imagine a lot of Pro Israel voters got a stick up their arse and mass voted. You could say bots but surely then they would have won. Or Russia would cheat to win every year.

I watch every year and have never voted. A small group with a cause could make a big number.

We probably have one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe too, shame many of them are (apparantly) okay with whats happening in Gaza. Lets hope its bots.

 

I think that's pretty presumptive.

It's difficult to measure the Jewish population in the UK but the 2021 census suggests about 0.5% of the population identified as Jewish by religion (which is a problematic way of measuring it because not all Jewish people follow the Jewish religion but the other metrics are even more flawed). 

But even recognising that the number from the census is probably lower than reality, its pretty ignorant (giving you the benefit of the doubt here) to think that Jewish people around the world identify with Israel on any level, even more so their recent politics. 

 

 

[Tommy!]

3 hours ago, garynysmon said:

Genuinely bewildered what people saw in the winning Swiss one

First year I've watched and I thought the same. 

UK getting 0 was surprising but not that unfair, he wasn't very good so I wasn't expecting it to go racking up a board shattering result.

Edited May 12, 2024 by Tommy!

[LEGIT]

I like Eurovision and I know it's been eccentric and different for a long time, but this was the first year I thought it went waaayyy over the mark for over sexualised performances and general distasteful stuff. I watch it every year with my son, but yeah, I probably wouldn't have let him watch some of it if I knew what it was going to be like. Ireland in particular was awful, not my kind of entertainment at all.

[lanky316]

17 hours ago, FLips said:

What was the deal with Isreal getting 12 points in our televote and them nearly winning it, but clearly getting boos and political messages aimed directly at them all show?

Everyone online seems fuming about it but then where did all the votes come from?

There are a few factors in this, certain media had spent most of the event talking about how hard done by they were by everyone. Compare articles popping up about the Dutch contestant assaulting a woman (rarely retracted or explaining what even the EBU said happened, regardless of how the Dutch said things went down) when he was disqualified to how many came out relating to harassment and behaviour from the Israeli delegation and crisis meetings where allegedly - and we only have non-EBU comments from a couple of delegations on this one so there can be a pinch of salt taken - people were told that they had indeed crossed several lines. Parts of the media, and the usual social media suspects were obviously playing things up and try to rally support from people who wouldn't pay any attention over it all and to mobilise the troops.

On that note, there was always likely to be a "show of support for Israel" vote regardless of anything that's happened around the event. Obviously the conflict over there is highly divisive with a big split population all over the place, as previously suggested a "pro-Israel vote" goes one way while an "anti-Israel vote" or indeed a vote for any other song regardless of views of the war is split over  20-odd other songs. It'll be more condensed in that regard as well but it's another way of getting a good chunk of votes on the public call. Of course these two factors on why they may have got such a big share of the televote is ignoring people that genuinely believed in it being the best song and performance on the night.

A couple of people suggested people within broadcasters had alluded to "irregular patterns" in voting during the semi-final and bots, "interference" and all that sort of thing but it's a slippery slope to talk about rigged voting and cheating. Israel's goal was always to try and use a "peoples champion" type narrative for propaganda purposes and they spent a lot of money on adverts to to try and advertise the song and get it attention. It wasn't a certainty but it doesn't scream a huge "FIX!" type result to me (it still didn't actually win the public vote after all) and I'm not surprised that it performed as well as it did when taking everything into account. The way voting was changed to allow for "you don't actually need to watch the show, vote any time in this big hour window" compared to a brief voting period after everyone has seen the performers doesn't feel right to me but I'm sure that a well timed movement even in that 15-30 minute could achieve a similar result.

Personally, I did struggle to separate all the off stage drama so it's hard for me to judge it entirely on it's own merits. Trying to be objective the best I personally could say was that I think it was "meh", she had a decent voice and it was "fine" musically but the performance and song overall I found fairly forgettable over the course of two hours of all sorts of music, there were songs I like more and songs I like less. Despite how people talk about Eurovision, it's a ridiculously varied thing going across several genres and usually has something for everyone. My "top 2" for what I'd tend to listen to the rest of the time were polar opposites in the results, Croatia which came second and Norway which came stone last. Everyone has different tastes and so while not everything will be my cup of tea generally I understand why songs performed as well, or bad, as they did. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

1 hour ago, LEGIT said:

I like Eurovision and I know it's been eccentric and different for a long time, but this was the first year I thought it went waaayyy over the mark for over sexualised performances and general distasteful stuff. I watch it every year with my son, but yeah, I probably wouldn't have let him watch some of it if I knew what it was going to be like. Ireland in particular was awful, not my kind of entertainment at all.

 

Odd one to pick out, considering there were examples of people wearing far less - or Finland where the fella was mostly completed naked.

I didn't really notice it being any more provocative than previous years, but I've seen this 'not suitable for children' thing used as an insult a few times.

Have Eurovision ever advertised themselves as being for children? I always think there's an odd assumption that because some people might choose to watch something with their kids, the product should then bend to their idea of what's acceptable for their kids.

It's essentially become the biggest mainstream outlet of LGBTQ+ pop culture, outside of the Pride Marches, in Europe hasn't it? Plus, it's scheduled to go on until midnight. I don't think there's any expectation that it'll be for children, nor should there be.