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Thursday 21st May - This time, I hope you don't mind
ESC Insight's Email Newsletter

Semi Final Two Broadcast Tonight

There you go, Semi Final One happened and we lost Moldova, the Netherlands, Finland, Macedonia, Belarus and Denmark who did not qualify through to the live show. Russia and Serbia have been big betting movers after the Contest, with the Russian song now moving to 2nd favourite with some bookies after drawing a second half slot. However in those tiny yet rapidly moving iTunes chart we see a huge West/East split. Estonia and Belgium are picking up support from the Western side of the continent, and Russia picking up more downloads in the East.

Working with Sam (she did most of it) we powered through the after show stats which seem to suggest songs later in the running order, at a lower tempo, were most successful. While we typed these away the press conferences revealed the usual little information, but Polina tactfully had to answer a question on LGBT rights.

If you didn’t not see the show or want to watch again, it is available on demand via the eurovision.tv webstream. You can also see the official YouTube playlist of songs as well as the postcards. I’ve not been able to find a sign language stream anywhere - but it should exist somewhere on the internet (help me!).

It means it’s time for Semi Final Two predictions from me, feeling surprisingly buoyed by my nine out of ten qualifiers predicted on Tuesday afternoon. I have no quarms about getting Hungary and Finland the wrong way around. Predictions for tonight are:

Ireland, Montenegro, Malta, Norway, Israel, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus. San Marino and Portugal are the only certain no hopers.

We Gotta Work, Work, Work

I may have left Vienna to fly back to Sweden (yes, I know) but I have still been writing. After the ballad-heavy qualification on Tuesday I’ve written why I blame the voting system on all these ballads qualifying. I also met the organising team from the sign language broadcasts of the show about their aims of the new project.

John Egan is in Vienna and has categorised Eurovision winners into five groups and suggested who they could be this year. Ewan’s and Luke’s alternative commentary to Semi Final One was ready too late for the last newsletter, but is still well worth a listen. Watch out for another one ahead of tonights show.

Usual podcasts are here (Wednesday and Thursday) as always, and John's writing the usual Notes from the Press Centre.

Best Of The Rest

Sneaking into the bottom corner of the shot this year were the hashflags that the EBU have worked with Twitter to create. Using the countries three letter ISO country code you can then create little flags to appear on your tweets during Eurovision week. It’s kind of sweet, and certainly saves space so we don’t need to hashtag #formeryugoslavrepublicofmacedonia.

Jon Ola Sand is not ruling out Australia will be in the Contest for the long term, saying 'it is clear we will discuss' this and suggesting the Reference Group will have it on their future agenda.

To see the performance that SVT do not want you to see, watch the car crash dance routine that is surrounding Måns as he appears on the X Factor show in Belgrade. It's not been a good week for Måns, with him admitting to Melodifestivalklubben that he was a few centimetres off during the Jury Final as well missing a note in the first verse.

British newspaper The Telegraph has some interesting bits of pre-Eurovision excitement, believing though that most Semi Final entries were awful. They’ve also started with some tips for your Eurovision Party (the drink when Australia is mentioned line could work well) and a review of what has happened to previous Eurovision entrants for the United Kingdom. For political balance we highlight the Guardian’s Eurovision Top 10 written by our own John Paul Lucas and their other look at potential political lyrics in this year's entries. 

For complete neutrality pick out the BBC Radio 2 Pop-Up Eurovision which began today and continues broadcasting until Sunday. 

I also particularly have enjoyed the side of Eurovision portrayed by ESC United, some of who appeared on Ewan’s first podcast of the season. They were outside before the show (as was I, getting interviewed with my Estonian flag on National TV) to soak up the pre-match atmosphere.

Robertson's Reflection

If you know me, then you will know that I like to seek out new and varied experiences that come along with the Eurovision world. I managed to throw myself into something quite unique and quite hotly anticipated on Tuesday night to discover something new, I stayed to watch the Semi Final in the Press Centre.

It definitely appeared at first glance to be an exciting decision to make. Around me were Eurovision experts and journalists from all walks of the Eurovision circus, and Ewan was busy setting up his camera on stopmotion setting so he could record all the highlights of the evenings. Groups of media had garnered sections of the Press Centre and grabbed their handheld flags aloft just like they were in the next door hall D instead of our basketball court.

As ‘Te Deum’ once more begins the volume across the Press Centre TV’s increases. It’s not at arena level but you certainly could sing along. Moldova suddenly makes a lot more sense at this kind of volume, not enough to start spontaneously dancing but enough to think it’s solid cheesy fun. Many around me screamed qualifier, and although I wouldn’t be surprised if Moldova was close in the mix this year this is an example of where the media bubble got into their own hype a little too much during those two hours.

I was promised a nationalistic atmosphere that would go a little crazy, but the atmosphere didn’t feel too special at all. I believe the cheers and the excitement were louder and more genuine when we all witnessed just how wonderful France’s rehearsal was on Sunday compared to Tuesday night. Perhaps it could be a staleness of seeing the show over and over again, or it could be my personal belief most of the songs were dull and contrived, but there was little magic in the Press Centre for me. Another factor may simply have been that too many, me included, had our heads half-fixated on our laptop screens as we tried to capture any new twitter peeps during the Semi Finals. The only saving grace of this would have been from the results, but they came so fast this year we had barely any time to work them through and express our outrage or relief to each other. 

Now I quite enjoy doing that, but it did make it all less special to be there for the show. When it comes to these three shows in May I need to be in an experience where I can celebrate them. I popped outside for half an hour before the show started to grab some street food and wander around the outside of the Stadthalle. The pre-match buzz was a great relief from the Press Room actually, and for me I think I need to be out of there to watch the shows. My atmosphere needs to be more casual, reminding me of the love for the Contest and to celebrate that with wild singing, dancing and clapping, instead we were grimacing across at each other during Elhaida’s upper register workout.

So next year, expect me to be in the hunt for some tickets, or to have an awesome chilled out giant screen in easy access for me. And if it does come to Stockholm, it might even be me organising it.


Pictures by EBU (Andres Putting and Thomas Hanses)
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