I hated this year's contest. Like the songs were of an amazing quality, in fairness, but the organisation and running of it by SVT was a disaster in my opinion. It seemed like the entire contest was one big international Melodifestivalen, the cutaway clips to Woodruff, the Swedish Smorgasbord interval act, Eric Saade's hosting in the Green Room, the fact that one song was clearly marked as the favourite in such an obvious, obvious way. Like Euphoria was clearly going to win since she won MelFest last year, but Ictimai and the EBU didn't go out of their way to let everyone know that it was the favourite.
Petra Mede was a terrible terrible host. She seemed arrogant and full of herself, her jokes were so forced, and she was so cold and impersonal, it was like Natasja Crone Back or Alsou all over again. I mean she was better than those jokers we had in Baku, but then my puppy could do a better job than them.
And I know I'll get called some kind of conspiracy nut or something by those who believe that the EBU is pure and transparent like a mountain stream, but the voting this year is highly suspect. A case that's very close to me, Ireland only got a single point from the UK. In 2003, we got 12, as we sent a singer from Lifford, a town on the border with the UK who had a very good song. This year, we sent a singer from the town just over the border from Lifford with a very good song, and we only got a single point. Then you see the likes of Azerbaijan and Russia and Armenia giving out that they didn't get votes from places that they normally get votes from, which is clearly a thinly-veiled complaint that the bribes they paid didn't come to the fruition that they would have expected. SMRTV allegedly bribed the juries in the semi final to ensure against possible qualification, something I'd well believe given the extraordinary fanbase Valentina Monetta had, as well as her brilliant song. Finally then, and most suspiciously, Sietse Bakker announced that the split jury/televote results won't be released this year centrally from the EBU, rather it will be up to the individual host broadcasters to do decide whether or not to release them. This clearly is a sign that something's afoot behind the scenes, I mean I can't think of a single reason not to release them centrally, unless they wanted to hide something incredibly damaging.
Perhaps most of this has already been posted in this thread or somewhere else in the forums, and I apologise if it was, I had exams the last week and didn't really pay much attention to the discussions taking place here as a result.
