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Eurovision 2021 - Netherlands - NPO/AVROTROS/NOS

Ahoy Arena - Rotterdam - 18/20/22 May 2021 (May 2019)

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FL
Flux
How come Graham “Mr” Norton was the only presenter/commentator interviewed this evening? Excuse my ignorance, is he well known across Europe or is there some fascination with the UK?


Yes - many European broadcasters show The Graham Norton Show (SVT in Sweden do for instance) so he is recognised worldwide. It gets a conveyor belt of A-list Hollywood guests that many other equivalent chat shows across Europe simply don't (and that's why they buy it). And as others have said - the YouTube / Social reach is much wider than the UK.

In many ways Graham's the biggest 'name' associated with Eurovision across Europe other than former performers like Abba and Celine Dion. Not that many other national broadcasters have a commentator with as big a national reputation, presenting a major TV chat show, let alone an international one like Graham.

Whilst the UK may not always be thought of as taking the contest seriously as a country, the reality is that the BBC having Sir Terry, and then Graham as their national commentators is seen by other European broadcasters as the BBC taking the actual broadcast of the contest very seriously.

He's often been the only featured commentator on previous contests - such as when he had a confetti fired into his commentary booth in Copenhagen 2014 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpg07b6nxnI


I thought it was also a nice touch by Graham to say (I paraphrase) “we may not have done well for a long time, but the UK still loves Eurovision”. And he did seem slightly emotional in his interview.

All in all a strong show given the circumstances. It still felt like Eurovision to some extent. I did question early on whether they should actually have made it a competition and opened a vote based on the videos of each song being shown (as the show’s format wouldn’t have to be changed much), but ultimately I think a celebration without a winner like this was probably the better option and “Love Shine a Light” was the perfect song to finish on.

I wasn’t a fan of the A-Z on BBC Two. It was well researched, some good clips and Rylan is a great host for anything Eurovision since his passion for it comes acrosa, but I always have a gripe with any clip show that works its way through the whole alphabet like that. It makes the show feel veeeeery long when you realise you’re only on F or G!
GE
thegeek Founding member

He's often been the only featured commentator on previous contests - such as when he had a confetti fired into his commentary booth in Copenhagen 2014 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpg07b6nxnI

I love the throwaway "oh, my wine" at the end of that clip.
SH
Sh1ruba
Somewhat related to Eurovision, during the Polish broadcast of last night's show, Viki Gabor (winner of JESC 2019) revealed the logo of the 2020 Junior Eurovision Song Contest.
*

The theme is "Move The World" and the contest will take place on the 29th November in Warsaw, but as a minor scale event. The EBU and TVP are having the contest take place in a smaller TV studio as opposed to the big arenas that we're normally used to.
Just be thankful we still have Junior Eurovision this year.
GO
gottago
Somewhat related to Eurovision, during the Polish broadcast of last night's show, Viki Gabor (winner of JESC 2019) revealed the logo of the 2020 Junior Eurovision Song Contest.
*

The theme is "Move The World" and the contest will take place on the 29th November in Warsaw, but as a minor scale event. The EBU and TVP are having the contest take place in a smaller TV studio as opposed to the big arenas that we're normally used to.
Just be thankful we still have Junior Eurovision this year.

I think whatever way they stage JESC this is definitely going to be a test for what they can do at Eurovision next year if they're still unable to do a full show from Rotterdam. Whether it's experimenting with different ways of having an audience or having the singers perform remotely. They've experimented with quite a few new rule changes at JESC first before then introducing them to ESC.
Jeffmister and Sh1ruba gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member
Flux posted:

I did question early on whether they should actually have made it a competition and opened a vote based on the videos of each song being shown (as the show’s format wouldn’t have to be changed much), but ultimately I think a celebration without a winner like this was probably the better option and “Love Shine a Light” was the perfect song to finish on.


As I understand it the Eurovision Song Contest as a competition couldn't be held this year partly because of event insurance issues. AIUI some of the cancellation costs of the contest have been covered by insurance. If the EBU had hosted a competition - of any sort - that insurance would not have paid out.
AN
Andrew Founding member
Both programmes got very poor ratings last night

The BBC programme: 2.9m
The EBU programme: 2.4m

Pointless Celebrities: 3.8m
In for a Penny (Rpt): 3.3m

It seems most are only interested in the actual Song Contest and nothing more or less
IS
Inspector Sands
Any ideas why Gina G’s performance was weirdly cropped during the BBC show earlier?

I wondered whether it might be to hide a caption at the bottom of the screen? (In a similar way to how the voting numbers were blurred in the 00s and beyond clips, but presumably a 90s caption would be even larger and clumsier to blur)

....but am I barking up the wrong tree?

I don't think voting began till the following year.

Yes 1998 in Birmingham was the first year with 'televoting' but only for some countries. It was also the first that put the name of the country in the bottom of the screen throughout performances.

I think it's forgotten that phone voting is a relatively new thing in Eurovision. There was a spate of articles a few years ago about the soviet equivalent deciding on a winner by turning on lights and monitoring power consumption. The insinuation being that the telephone infrastructure of the time couldn't cope with telephone voting.... Not realising that the West didn't have it till 1998
NG
noggin Founding member
Both programmes got very poor ratings last night

The BBC programme: 2.9m
The EBU programme: 2.4m

Pointless Celebrities: 3.8m
In for a Penny (Rpt): 3.3m

It seems most are only interested in the actual Song Contest and nothing more or less


Yes - there's a reason the ratings for the regular contest peak during the voting, not the performances.

Plus the EBU show was against Britain's Got Talent from 200 to 2120 - which is going to be even tougher competition.
FL
Flux
Somewhat related to Eurovision, during the Polish broadcast of last night's show, Viki Gabor (winner of JESC 2019) revealed the logo of the 2020 Junior Eurovision Song Contest.
*

The theme is "Move The World" and the contest will take place on the 29th November in Warsaw, but as a minor scale event. The EBU and TVP are having the contest take place in a smaller TV studio as opposed to the big arenas that we're normally used to.
Just be thankful we still have Junior Eurovision this year.

I think whatever way they stage JESC this is definitely going to be a test for what they can do at Eurovision next year if they're still unable to do a full show from Rotterdam. Whether it's experimenting with different ways of having an audience or having the singers perform remotely. They've experimented with quite a few new rule changes at JESC first before then introducing them to ESC.


Definitely. I think whilst the competition will return next year, it won't necessarily be back to how it used to be - as with most large events - and so organisers will be keen to have a new format tested, even if it's initially as a backup.
MI
mici0123


My guess is that Germany delayed their broadcast, and some other broadcasters did what S4C sometimes do on JESC, and took longer ad breaks and then time shifted the following parts.

There were only three 2'00" ad breaks in a 2 hour show (the NikkieTutorials stuff was the break filler) - for some commercial broadcasters 3'00" an hour wouldn't have been enough...


Yeah, Germany did delay it by 1 hour to have a 10 song mini contest of their own.
They actually had Daði og Gagnamagnið, The Roop, Ben & Tan and Ben Dolic live in Hamburg.



I only found Daðis performance on YT, but the whole broadcast is sadly geoblocked. I'm surprised AVROTROS didn't use this for the Europe wide program.
MA
mapperuo
Flux posted:


Definitely. I think whilst the competition will return next year, it won't necessarily be back to how it used to be - as with most large events - and so organisers will be keen to have a new format tested, even if it's initially as a backup.



Agree also, Infact the Dutch officials have said there wont be any concerts of any type in the country until a vaccine is found, So we just aren't going to see 10,000 people in an arena next year. However with a whole year to plan this, It should be doable to have an alternative.
RW
Robert Williams Founding member
I wondered whether it might be to hide a caption at the bottom of the screen? (In a similar way to how the voting numbers were blurred in the 00s and beyond clips, but presumably a 90s caption would be even larger and clumsier to blur)

....but am I barking up the wrong tree?

I don't think voting began till the following year.

Yes 1998 in Birmingham was the first year with 'televoting' but only for some countries.

Five countries did use televoting in 1997 - the UK, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Germany. In 1998 nearly all countries used televoting - according to Wikipedia only Turkey, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary didn't.

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