And who could forget the threat of the coin toss. A legendary NF show.

This, Lena was an unknown remember!

No, I will watch it at home.


Of course. But the NDR tried it so often with this concept.

Honest to God, I mean to send shorter posts and it just doesn't quite happen....

The voting – I think there’s things to be said for the 2016 voting format. It at least means we don’t know whose won ages before the end and that was the whole point and Czech Republic didn’t get completely hammered by the maths as surely would have happened under the previous system. It’s possible it helped them qualify in the first place….

I would argue the 2016 is actually very good for transparency. We can also see the differences between jury voting and public voting and it becomes incredibly obvious where there’s a farcical amount of diaspora voting (ahem Poland and Lithuania) or where certain juries are blanking each other fighting their own little proxy wars – (I’m looking at you Armenia and Azerbaijan!) It also shows that with a weaker entry, countries that have traditional links don’t vote for you, there are very good reasons. Following the whole ethnic/historic ties thing, Australia should be raining points on us, they have NEVER given us anything and they don’t have any reason to be mad at us.

It's not perfect of course, San Marino’s entirely fictive tele-vote is an issue I have ranted about before and desperately needs sorted out. And the jurors have to be better prepared to use the voter forms correctly given the infamous Hilda Heick form whoops-y and vetted more carefully a la Anastasia Stotskaya – which I suspect they will be anyway.

I can’t imagine that Ola Sand will tinker with the voting system – given controversies last year, he’d are inviting more trouble even opening the issue up again. We have the information, we should be able to have a solid result don’t you think?

UK NF – alas I fear it would be too much to ask for the BBC to mount a proper NF with proper PR and a proper jury system. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Katrina just as much as the next person, where’s Jade Ewen, Molly or somebody whose actually done it semi-recently when we need them? I would settle for Bonnie, a music veteran who at least has recent experience of ESC and has a good idea what this year’s sacrificial lamb is taking on…. At least it’s on BBC2, which I think is the right channel for it to be on. Dare we hope for BBC2 Semis with a competent commentator in May?

I given that I have an Australian passport (dual-national – thanks Mum!), I am SO changing allegiances! I'm just so sick and tired of being furious and slagging off the entry before the finalists have even been announced because you just know its gonna be a car-crash and this year it’s gonna be worse than normal ‘cos it doesn’t matter what the hell we send….

German NF – not overwhelmed with confidence. Is this now really all about Babs? Lena was a quirky exception and got away with it. She's a one of I suspect. Anything's an improvement over last year's snafu with Xavier Naidoo. Third times the charm….

Hungarian NF – what the hell is it with ESC and Kallay-Saunders? Surely there must be other ways of advertising your newest single than entering A Dal?

San Marino – make up your mind, either chain Monetta to the stage, pony up the dough for Arisa or bow-out with dignity and concede that you are a tiny bit small to be doing this, though we will always love your mighty minnow ways….

Lena and Roman Lobb both managed to get high placings from similar formats

Has Spotify had a cull of past Eurovision years? Apple Music has removed so much in the last 2 weeks or so. Thinking of moving back to Spotify...

Weekend bump, don't forget to get those votes in

Are we getting a Lithuanian show tonight?

7pm... oh the sheer joy of it...

http://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/tiesiogiai/lrt-televizija

The early heats are supposed to be elimination shows with half the acts progressing, but whether that actually happens, who knows.

Here for that one Saturday each year when Lithuania's webstream viewing numbers reaches double figures. Next week it'll be the LRT janitor and his cat viewing alone.

We get David Sneddon's song tonight as well as NeferTina's duet .

The show was recorded earlier in the week and the jury voted, so there may be a clue as to how things will go tonight....

Listening to DS final now and probably not online tmrw so will submit my votes quite soon.

Are you gonna punish non-voters?
We did a 13p penalty at least once but also had years without penalties...

Must say there are a lot of songs in final that are incredibly dull (IMO)

Oh Sasha Son changed his name to Sasha Song!

Yes. It was a bit confusing (...)

Going through the Fantasy final, does anyone else think the Alvaro Soler song sounds exactly like this from Melfest a few years ago? It's uncanny!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1WRYralwh0

A bit maybe?
Wasnt this one of the first "wildcards" or whatever they called them?
I liked it.

its really funny how similar they are and how terrible this is.

Non voters have 12 points taken off them I think there was only 1 song that made it through from a non semifinal voter so I think we should get all the votes

Anyone's link working yet?

Mine is currently frozen on a map of Europe.

Link not working for me either

I've opened Chrome and it's working with stuttering on there. No go on IE for me.

I have a beastly Intel I7-4790 now, so it's definitely them creaking with demand and no longer me at fault for once!

Even this second one is dead - http://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/tiesiogiai/lrt-lituanica

Edit: Oh it's slowly stuttering into life the second link.

Behind the scenes stuff at the moment. I love how seriously they are taking this. You'd think they were setting up in Globen.

Song 1 Justin3 - Streets of Vilnius. And we're off.