I'm wondering what you think is behind the recent poor placements of host entries. Obviously, the main thing to blame is always the quality of the songs and performances, but still, it's such a noticable trend that it can't be blamed on coincidence, nor do i think they have been all that low quality, and most would probably agree that it's not the only reason.
Host entries used to do pretty well, even in the modern edition of the contest, top 10 and even top 5 placements were common. What really broke the trend in a shocking way was Austria's last place with zero points in 2015, something many thought just wasn't possible, especially as most found the song and performance perfectly decent and even placed them in their top 15 or 20 overall entries. I guess this showed that the host entry isn't simply guaranteed to have a good score, and while Frans from Sweden ended up 5th in 2016, the next years have been truly bad for host entries:
2017 (Ukraine) 24th. 2018 (Portugal) last. 2019 (Israel) 23rd. 2021 (Netherlands) 23rd again.
The only one of these that didn't really surprise me was Portugal, but it seems there's something else than the quality of the songs here. Are people simply unwilling to vote for the host country, and if so, why did the trend change, when if anything host countries used to do better than the countries usually do until 2015?
And do you see Italy repeating the bottom-right placement next year, either no matter what they send, or because of the song quality?
Host entries used to do pretty well, even in the modern edition of the contest, top 10 and even top 5 placements were common. What really broke the trend in a shocking way was Austria's last place with zero points in 2015, something many thought just wasn't possible, especially as most found the song and performance perfectly decent and even placed them in their top 15 or 20 overall entries. I guess this showed that the host entry isn't simply guaranteed to have a good score, and while Frans from Sweden ended up 5th in 2016, the next years have been truly bad for host entries:
2017 (Ukraine) 24th. 2018 (Portugal) last. 2019 (Israel) 23rd. 2021 (Netherlands) 23rd again.
The only one of these that didn't really surprise me was Portugal, but it seems there's something else than the quality of the songs here. Are people simply unwilling to vote for the host country, and if so, why did the trend change, when if anything host countries used to do better than the countries usually do until 2015?
And do you see Italy repeating the bottom-right placement next year, either no matter what they send, or because of the song quality?