Now we have the votes of the Crimea jury:-

Ukraine nil pwoint.

Russia 1 million pwoint.

Will Eurovision happen?

Presumably they'll pick one of the women ex-England footballers who provides punditry for the BBC's coverage of women's football. And why shouldn't they have a woman providing punditry for men's football. They have male pundits providing analysis for the women's football.


Reference Eurovision and the comment(s) that the UK will never win - those of us interested in Eurovision don't care about winning. We just want to score some points and finish in a reasonable position. Like we did the year Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote our entry.

The BBC is granted access to television pictures from every EBU participant. It also allows coverage of all European events that the EBU cover including the Pope's Easter message, the selection of the pope and so on. All mainstream channels are members of the EBU but the BBC gets significantly more priviledges because they pay more money into the organisation. There is nothing to stop ITV paying more and getting the television rights for the ESC but they don't want it as it wouldn't be cost effective for them.

Didn't the UK have a couple of good years at Eurovision recently? Jade Ewen wasn't great yet she still came fifth. Blue did alright. I think we do lack the "regional vote" so when we're bad we do awfully (whereas other countries will avoid coming last due to local support). But we can clearly do reasonably well if we try.


It would be like getting some bloke that only ever played for a conference side on as a pundit. The quality of men's football is miles and miles ahead of women's football which still does not even have a fully professional league.

Any man that wants to be a pundit needs qualifications (usually playing extensively in the Premier League or managing in The Premier League). Why should women be exempt?

That Sunday episode of The Voice sounds like it will be going up against the series finale of Top Gear on the 16th, which may cause a clash of younger demographics.

I wonder if they will try to install a female presenter onto Top Gear after they've done Match of The Day

Sunday Mirror: Christine Bleakley's ITV show Off The Beaten Track will not be renewed.

Hello magazine: Julia Bradbury quits Countryfile to front a new show for ITV on landscapes.

Susanna Reid: The Sun (which has changed its mind 3 times on this) says Susanna isn't in the right frame of mind to do publicity for Good Morning Britain yet. The Mirror says Susanna will be given time off from the Beeb following the split from her partner.

The UK since 2009 with juries returning have had every country vote for it at least once but Montenegro. So there is no hate against the UK. We are getting ahead ourselves and will see on the reveal show tonight. If the song is a hit I would predict strong ratings.

Adele could've sung Someone Like You for the UK at Eurovision and we still wouldn't make the top 3. Some weird song with people dancing badly and awful vocals from the Eastern bloc (as Terry Wogan would say) would probably win instead. The UK does badly in the televote. Even in the year Jade Ewen did it, she didn't do well in the phone votes.

The Sun has also revised down the amount of money Susanna will receive at ITV from £1 million to £500,000. She'd better hurry and sign otherwise it will be down to £250,000.

Julia Bradbury will be no great loss to Countryfile as she hasn't been on much recently in any case, apparently pursuing her career with ITV quiz shows.

Any country can win it, only one Eastern country has done so since 2009. Unless we go down the Wogan route and anyone that is not Ireland or the UK is the Eastern Block.

Jade was 10th wih the televote and 3rd with the Jury.
Blue were 5th with the televote and 22nd with the Jury.

The only country that the UK has not beat in the televote in recent years is Azerbaijan.

I would think Julia Bradbury would be a bigger loss than Reid. Bradbury has done a lot of peaktime programs and would be much better known.

An ITV countryside programme. Haven't we been here before recently ?

From whats implied it seems to be more of a Coast/Country walks type program.

I never saw Christine Bleakley's Off the Beaten Track but wasn't that the sort of thing she was doing ?

I never saw it either but its pretty much the same sort of thing. Bradbury of course has done walking programs on BBC2. I am sure its just a coincidence that Bleakley's program is dropped days before this announcement.

Slightly similar as it was set in the country, but it was bsically like any other ITV celeb fronted country doc.

I've stated before ITV should create a coast/country/nature type programme where they visit coasts along Britain in obscure and well known places.

You mean copy BBC shows like Countryfile and Coast

Another reason why Twitter stats are meaningless.

Total number of tweets on Saturday night.

THE VOICE UK 69,583
SATURDAY NIGHT TAKEAWAY 31,723

With that you'd think The Voice would be further ahead in the ratings. Last week Takeaway was number one. You'd think it would have been top last week based on Twitter trends

Basically don't base ratings on Twitter.

Well how can you do a country doc without someone on here stating they've copied the BBC.

But then again The Voice did go on for about double Takeaway's runtime so was bound to rack up more tweets.

Nobody watched anything last night.....0 viewers

Unless they've been delayed I guess there's nothing to shout about.

#callthemidwife on BBC1 continued to put in a top performance with 8.9m/32.9% http://www.overnights.tv

#MrSelfridge on ITV just came out on top against #TheMusketeers on BBC1 in the 9pm slot - 4.5m/19.2% vs 4.4m/18.9% http://www.overnights.tv

#TopGear audience of 5.1m/18.8% meant BBC2 + BBC1 had more than 50% combined Share between 8 and 9pm http://www.overnights.tv

Assuming that excludes +1 Mr Selfridge above TM, which drops (although slightly) again. A real shame both should be doing better.

I really cant explain why the 2 dramas are so low but there it is.