Tag Archives: elaborate staging

Cookie Fonster Reacts to Eurovision 2016 (Final): A Controversial but Rightful Winner

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Intro Post

< 2016 Semifinals | 2016 Final | 2017 Semifinals >

I’ve planned out a schedule for when to watch the 2017 semifinals. If all goes well, I should be able to release the post no later than the morning of July 6, before I leave for a weekend trip to Pittsburgh.

Introduction

Välkommen till Globen i Stockholm, the arena where 26 countries would fight for the prize of the 61st Eurovision Song Contest, hosted by the iconic duo of Petra Mede (audience explodes into cheering and chants her name)

… and Måns Zelmerlöw. (audience cheers, but not quite as loudly)

To start off the final, we got a flag parade set to a medley of EDM songs by Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, and a few other artists, easy to bop your head to and build hype in the audience. The contestants don’t hold physical flags, but instead the colors of each flag are projected onto white outfits worn by background performers. A bit too avant-garde if you ask me, but otherwise a lovely opening.

The postcards this year are simple and ungimmicky. As with 2013, they’re just the contestants doing activities in their home countries. As much as I wish the recent SVT contests showcased Sweden in their postcards, and as disconcerting as the zoom-ins to standing contestants are, it’s good that they stuck to the roots of Eurovision postcards and didn’t do tourism ads or Bible animations. And in any case, I can pretend Hungary’s train station is the Malmö Centralstation if I squint hard enough. But my favorite type of postcards will always be flag-themed.

Russia sent a song blatantly designed to win and it won the televote but only got third place overall. Australia sent a song I would have never expected to do well that won the jury vote, but got only second place over all. The runner-up of both the jury and televote is an absolute masterpiece of a song called “1944”, composed and performed by Jamala from Ukraine, who gave her country its second victory.

The voting was totally revamped from Eurovision 2015. For the first time in Eurovision history, the votes were determined not by a mix of jury and televote, but by the sum of the two. The jury spokespersons announced each country’s 12 points only, and then the hosts revealed the points each country got from the televote one by one. For the first three years of this combined system, the televote points were announced in order from lowest to highest, in a “last man standing” type of system.

I watched the grand final together with Liv with Swedish commentary (not Edward af Sillén this time, but a female radio host who later got fired for sexual harassment), then by myself with British commentary (the usual Graham Norton).

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Cookie Fonster Rants About Eurovision 2008 (Semifinals): The Year of Rainbow Barf Staging

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Intro Post

< 2007 Final | 2008 Semifinals | 2008 Final >

We’ve heard 29 songs out of 37 (36 if Israel withdraws) for Eurovision 2024! I plan on releasing “Unorganized predictions and hopes for Eurovision 2024 (Volume 3)” within the next few days.

Introduction

If you thought Eurovision 2007 had an overly huge lineup of countries, then 2008 was even crazier. All countries from 2007 returned except for Austria, and two made their debut: the oft-forgotten microstate of San Marino, and the controversial Caucasus country of Azerbaijan. This meant that singers representing 43 countries would go to Belgrade (the capital of Serbia) and battle for the grand prize. The map of Europe was now complete, except for two microstates (Liechtenstein and Vatican City) and the disputed country of Kosovo, which declared independence three months before the contest. The only new country that has joined since then is Australia.

The 2007 semifinal had 28 countries compete for ten slots, which was a death sentence for any country without enough bloc voting partners. To prevent this from happening again, the EBU overhauled the format for 2008. From this year onwards, only the Big Four and the host country qualified straight to the finals, whereas the other countries were split across two semifinals. These 38 countries were divided into six pots based on bloc voting patterns, so that half of each pot would go to semifinal 1, and the other half to semifinal 2. The participants in semifinal 1 were not allowed to vote in semifinal 2, and vice versa. The Big Four and host country could only vote in one semifinal each: as decided by a random draw, Spain and Germany voted in the first one, and the UK, France, and Serbia voted in the second. All participating countries got to vote in the final.

Ten countries were picked to qualify from each semifinal: the top nine were determined from televoting, and the tenth using backup juries. But in the grand final, the results were once again pure televoting (except San Marino, which used backup juries). Though the voting would get tweaked in later years, especially regarding the presence of juries, the two-semifinal format has remained the same. After the problem of too many participating countries began in 1993, the EBU finally found a good solution. Some fans aren’t happy about the Big Five rule, but otherwise the two-semifinal system works like a charm.

For some reason, uploads of the 2008 semifinals are tough to find online, especially those with commentary. NRK came to the rescue and has the entire broadcast on their website with Norwegian commentary, so long as I have a VPN set to Norway. Expect a lot of “the Norwegian commentator said something about ABBA and Bobbysocks”. Actually, I’ve been referring to commentators by their names as of late, and her name is Hanne Hoftun.

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Cookie Fonster Researches 2007 (Semifinal): A Near-Complete Map, but at What Cost?

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Intro Post

< 2006 Final | 2007 Semifinal | 2007 Final >

Introduction

Seven cities in Finland submitted bids to host Eurovision 2007, and the winner was unsurprisingly its capital city of Helsinki. Most of the bidding cities were on or near the southern coast, but two cities far north offered to host—one was even north of the Arctic Circle! The northernmost Eurovision host city remains Bergen and will probably stay that way unless Iceland wins. In case I forget to mention it later, Lisbon (2018) is the westernmost Eurovision host city, narrowly beating Millstreet (1993).

This contest featured the second largest number of countries to ever participate at Eurovision, a whopping 42. Hungary and Austria returned after skipping 2006, Monaco left the contest till the present day, and four new countries joined: Czechia, Georgia, and the newly separate countries of Serbia and Montenegro. This contest featured almost the entire map of Europe! The only significant gaps were Italy, Slovakia, and Luxembourg. A participant map with so few holes is unthinkable these days.

The huge amount of countries raised a problem: the semifinal consisted of 28 countries and was going to an absolute bloodbath. That’s the largest number of countries that have ever competed in a single night of Eurovision. All ten qualifiers were from eastern Europe—we’ll see for ourselves if that was a coincidence. I’ll review the 18 non-qualifiers in this post. Argh, I’ll have to wait so long before I get to “Dancing Lasha Tumbai”. Oh, and I watched this semifinal with German commentary.

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Cookie Fonster Looks Back on Eurovision 2005 (Semifinal): The Year of Overcomplicated Staging

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Intro Post

< 2004 Final | 2005 Semifinal | 2005 Final >

We have such an exciting variety of songs confirmed for Eurovision 2024, and we’ve still only heard 13 songs out of 37. That means we’re only a third of the way through! Right now I think Ukraine is most likely to win, followed by Italy. If Ukraine wins the contest, I really hope the country will become safe enough to host in 2025.

Introduction

We’ve now reached the 50th annual Eurovision Song Contest! Less than nine months ago I was reviewing the first ever Eurovision, and now here I am at what’s unquestionably a modern Eurovision. It’s got hosts in colorful outfits, extravagant self-deprecating opening acts, a black stage full of fancy light effects, an overview of the televoting system in English and French, and it’s even broadcast in widescreen! Aside from the 3D visual design of the screen captions, this looks very close to the Eurovision we know today.

Eurovision 2005 was one of two contests to take place in Ukraine, both of which were hosted in its capital city of Kyiv. This year, Ukraine had freshly come out of the Orange Revolution, so the country hoped that hosting Eurovision would boost its relations with the EU. But hosting the contest wouldn’t be easy for them. While Istanbul had a hefty stadium available with over 10,000 seats, in Ukraine the best available arena needed a lot of renovation and ended with only 5,000 seats. Tourists also had a lot of problems with hotels in Kyiv, with many bookings getting abruptly cancelled, but I’m sure that when it was all finished, Ukrainians were proud to have hosted Eurovision.

This year’s contest featured all 36 countries that appeared in 2004, plus three more: Bulgaria and Moldova made their debuts, and Hungary returned after skipping the last six years. The last major gap in Europe was the Czech Republic, which would join the contest in 2007, though Italy, Luxembourg, and Slovakia were still on Eurovision hiatus, and tiny little San Marino was still yet to debut. Crazy enough, Lebanon was almost going to participate this year and even had a song ready, but unsurprisingly for an Arab country, they withdrew because of Israel.

This time the semifinal featured 25 countries, ten of which would qualify to the grand final. Are any of the 15 non-qualifiers worth listening to? We’ll find out together, with some German commentary to guide us.

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Cookie Fonster’s Treatise on Eurovision 2002: Baltic Host, Baltic Winner

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Intro Post

< 2001 Review | 2002 Review | 2003 Review >

A few hours after this post is published, we’ll find out who Ireland will send to Eurovision 2024. National final season is shaping up!!! (Please tell me they won’t send Next in Line.)

Introduction

Eurovision 2002 began a brave journey through first-time host countries, which meant a lot of smaller, less experienced broadcasters were put up to this task. The first to take on this daunting challenge was Estonia’s ETV, who hosted the contest in its capital of Tallinn. It seemed uncertain at first whether ETV could host the contest, but they pulled through thanks to fundraisers and a loan from the Estonian government.

Once they were certain they could host the contest, Estonia decided to have some fun with it and themed it upon fairy tales, as we’ll see in the postcards. It was the first contest to have an official slogan, which is “A Modern Fairytale”. The rules of the contest were mostly the same as 2001, with one small change: the recap after all the songs were performed was done in reverse order, to reduce bias towards entries performed late.

All countries that were relegated from 2001 (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, North Macedonia, Romania, Switzerland) got to return this year, and six countries were originally going to be relegated this year: Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland. However, Portugal withdrew from the contest, which meant Latvia got to participate after all. Latvia went on to achieve the unlikely feat of scoring first place with one of the least popular winners in Eurovision history.

This year as a whole is something of a black sheep. It doesn’t have many uploads online compared to others in the 2000’s—I could only find British and Spanish commentary, so I went with Terry Wogan—and most of its songs aren’t well-remembered. I’ll come in with an open mind so we can find out together if this year was as bad as everyone says. The hosts are genuinely enthusiastic this time, which is a welcome change of pace.

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