I think Tom Hardy sums it up perfectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTr1M7DwLkc

Isn't it inevitable at this point that it'll be Kyiv? Everything already being in place, it'll allow them to concentrate on other things.

I don't think any of us are expecting a big show, though.

Utter farce from start to finish this! Like I say I can see the EBU stepping in and giving it to someone else at this rate, because this is weeks and months of organisation going the drain with each delay.

With time of the essence and needing one of the three bids with the least chaos and upheaval then just give it to Dnipro, because they've never had to chop and change anything and have stuck by their plans throughout the process.

If only the EBU had've had the sense to ban the political song from the start, could've avoided this mess altogether...

Waiting for the announcement like...

Yawnnn.

Am I the only one who thinks Ukraine aren't going to host this at all? If they do have to drop out, who takes it? Second place (Awkward much)? Sweden? Could it even be...us?! Are the Beeb ready?

Does anyone remember the run up to 2005? Surely it wasn't this much of a shambles?

When did Denmark announce? I remember it being quite late, I'm sure there was a time when we all thought we were going to Aalborg or Herning for a while!

Just realised one of my favourite songs is in this weeks playlist!

Ridiculous. That's all I'm saying.


Bumping this up!

And there I was thinking I'd missed the announcement.

This bodes well for the actual contest...

I'd rather they take their time and get it right, it's all the false starts that's so irritating!

Copenhagen was announced on 2nd September, but atleast they stuck to their guns. I think all this constant date changing and false announcements are dampening the hopes of most fans.

I think if the 2010 and 2011 NF season is anything to go by it shows that Ukrainians are not reknowned for their organisation!

Reviews

Clare Maguire - Elizabeth Taylor- Literally ain't heard from her in about 5 years. Need to go and listen to her older stuff, as for this song its decent she has better though
Jain - Come- Not a fan of her voice
Issa - Crossfire- The start sounds like some cheesy tv show in the 90s. Bit naff
Marina- Forget- Not listened to much Marina since her first album. This ones okay though, love her voice.
Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 - Oh god...next
Tom Odell - Magnetised- Decent song
Jorge Blanco - Light Your Heart - Typical mid-tempo pop
Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra - Pinga- Not for me
Aneeka - Ojo por Ojo- Catchy, like this one
I Want It Now - Veruca Salt - The bit of novelty in the competition...not likely to trouble my top 25
Demi Lovato - Confident- 156m views, my reaction meh
Juulia - Vakavaa- Didn't really keep my attention
Lolly-Big Boys Don't Cry- Sure I liked this as a child but damnnnn my ears
Cab Calloway - Kickin' The Gong Around- From one extreme to another, another one not doing it for me
Foxes- Youth- Heard a lot about Foxes but this is my first time listening. Quite like it
London Grammar - Strong- One of there best songs, such a unique voice
Hailee Steinfeld - Rock Bottom- Could imagine this in the actual contest, continues the run of good songs.
Lana Del Rey - Gods and Monsters- Only really liked 2 or 3 songs by her this ain't one.
The Communards - For A Friend - Certainly not one of their better songs, a hard listen
Savage Garden - I Want You- Swear Savage Garden have had about 10 songs entered over the years. An okay song
Britney Spears - Stronger- Actually one of her better songs, shame about most of the rest of her tracks
ROW | Greta Salóme- Not sure I have got over her not qualifying this year. This is okay though
Hedley - Perfect - Not perfect
Ocean Colour Scene - The Day We Caught The Train- Such a great song, such a 90s vibe and a vibe of summer to it

We are talking about a country that doesn’t have the greatest history for transparency in the world and does have its own very particular ways of going about things (anybody else recall the song selection fracas of 2011 featuring both Crimean Ukrainian songstresses, Jamala and Gravity’s Zlata Ognevich and eventual 2011 competitor Mika Newton?) – never-mind their unique, old-school political culture of which this is a spectacularly public example. They’ve staged a Contest in the relatively recent past, they do have some sense of how these things work and the technical needs – which is why damn near everybody ruled out the Kiev Palace of Sports early on – and means that they are not coming into this blind the way they were before the 2005 Contest.

This is not October, we need not panic yet. I’m willing to bet it’s as much to do with the internal politics of the country and maintaining alliances – ‘cos this costs a packet to stage for what is one of the poorest countries in Europe (you can bet the Ukrainian Finance Minister damn near had a stroke when they won – she what!!! How???). They’ll get the help they need, but they need to be satisfied amongst themselves first.

Suggesting it go to another country does nothing but strength the retroactive ‘Russia woz Robbed’ brigade. It would be a massive blow to Ukraine’s national pride to fail and may well discourage them to enter again – they’ll pull it off if it kills them. And why in God’s name would Sweden want to host again? Australia patently can’t as the runner-up – their physical distance from the other competing countries. Do we really want Russia to have that particular propaganda gift? Never-mind the whole gay rights issue, the prospect of rubbing Ukraine’s nose in it would be too delicious to resist and they are human after-all. The BBC is likely to quietly remind the world of its near total disinterest in the Contest (woe betide they be forced into submitting a proper entry) and rather ought to remind everybody that they last time they did host was in 1998 – practically the dark ages in Eurovision terms and a whole six years before the Ukraine’s first entry and do we really want our politicians arguing about whether it goes to London or Cardiff or Glasgow or Manchester and then Scotland taking the huff for loosing out? Seriously, who else is mad enough to offer to take it on with less than a full year’s warning? No, it has to be made to work or it undermines the whole future of the Contest – and they know that only too well, which is why they are taking their time – and if that means parachuting in an A-Team to help them in every way possible or let the EBU pick the venue itself, that’s what happens. End of.

My guess is it’ll be a smaller show which says infinitely more about the culture, history and traditions of host country than the last several contests and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, surely nobody wants them to be all the same and getting a taste of the country would be nice, so long as it’s all done tastefully, which I’m sure it will be. Odds on that we’ll be seeing a hell of a lot of Jamala no matter what….

The mess of their National Final should be enough warning to anyone that this farcical performance was going to present itself. They can't even agree on a set date for the host city announcement, so I dread to think what's going to happen when they have real decisions to plan and organise. The longer they mess about, the more venues are becoming booked up. They had a deadline, which seemingly they'll now miss and so compensation will have to be paid out of the funds to secure the venue and tell whoever is in for those weeks to kindly jog on elsewhere.

It's their time and money they're wasting. They make the Rio Olympics and Paralympics seem like a well organised unit. Everyone was robbed, the song broke the rules but the EBU rolled over, just like they did for Bjorkman to change the voting. Both situations could've saved all of this hassle, (FYI Australia would've been a co-host with Germany, or us or someone else, so distance doesn't factor) and I think even Ukraine would agree it's a hassle. It's been great work experience and promotion for the city tourist boards with all those Visit [Insert City]-esque videos. But Ukraine clearly didn't expect to win, hence why they're scrabbling around in an, "OMG we actually won?!, Oh god now we have to host, crap we left after 2014 because we're skint and at war, what do we do? Quick ring Vitali Klitschko and Ruslana, they will surely save us!" haze.

Of the bids, Dnipro has set their stall out from day one and never wavered from it. Apparently it's between Kiev and Odessa, but both have had to basically re-write their proposals from scratch and repeatedly in Odessa's case with that bloody roof fiasco. Although in Odessa's favour they were/are suggesting hiring possibly the Dusseldorf team to help them out. Yes Kiev has all the infrastructure and obviously the past experience, but that was 11yrs ago, Eurovision has kicked on tenfold since those almost primitive days.

I'm all for having another slice of Ukrainian culture, because you know they'll go to town on that and Ruslana is definitely going to be utilised a lot and hopefully plied with a lot of booze in equal measure. But my inner snob does fear how small the anticipated small-scale is going to be. Austria's hosting was a resounding dud and I don't want Ukraine to suffer the same down-scaling effect and scrimping on the technological wizardry that's become the new normal.

Only really guessing from the little information we have, but I suspect the delay could be while they finalise funding for whichever venue they've decided they prefer, supposedly they might need some cash from the private sector. Would be amazed if the number one choice of venue hasn't already been reserved and they just don't want to announce until they're 100 per cent sure all the plans are finalised.

Exhibition centre in Kiev possibly the most likely (2005 Eurovision venue has been ruled out). Glad that Dnipro is seemingly out of it, I don't think anything about that bid looked encouraging at all - poor venue, not particularly great city, no hotels, no flights.

Update: decision put back for five to seven days.

Hadn't seen the plan for the exhibition centre before, like Odessa it looks... weird.
http://wiwibloggs.com/2016/08/24/eur...-venue/149087/

Potentially a few restricted views, looks like the place isn't quite big enough and the roof isn't quite high enough to be able to make it work in quite the same way as Copenhagen.

I really do think all this fuss about the host city is just a ploy to string it a long for as long as possible because NTU have realised that Ukraine cannot host, I think when it finally comes out heads will roll including Jon Ola Sands. Then I think some countries will be selected for quick fire last minute hosting bids, I actually wouldn't be surprised if countries have already been approached to make preliminary booking for arenas amongst other stuff. Either way I think 2017 will be an austerity contest with a very basic stage and just a large LED backdrop behind it.

Nobody in a million years could have seriously expected 1944 to actually win, get to the Final yes, but win – everybody was too busy planning a trip to Moscow…. Of course there's no planning for that. Sure, Australia has to anticipate and some smaller countries with fancied songs will anticipate, but serious planning? So much of it is luck. It is the nature of this Contest that there have been many entries historically that could easily have been kicked out and weren't or that may have been viewed as controversial or political. Going far enough back, 1970's winner for Ireland was sung by a schoolgirl from Derry/Londonderry – Northern Irish Unionists would have had a problem with Dana singing for Ireland not the UK, particularly given the circumstances at the time. It was her right to do it, it's freedom of speech, but she knew fine well the statement she was making. The Spanish spent a Tango in support of Argentina in 1982 during the early stages of the Falklands War, the famous Sami protest number for Norway in 1980, the entirety of the 1990 post-Berlin Wall Contest, the mere presence of the Bosnians at the 1993 Contest etc. They could all have theoretically been disqualified, Jamala was just more straight-up but smart with the PR and the staging (and got 10 points from Russia on the tele-vote). It depends on your perspective.

As to the scale of the 2017 Contest, it depends on whether you think that massive staging and over-the-top technology is an essential or whether the 'bigness' sometimes detracts from the songs themselves. I preferred Polina Gagarina to Mans partly because her song didn't need that much staging, it was good on its own – his needed that LED screen to sell the concept. Russia this year had too much staging – I’d have enjoyed it more with less. I do like it when songs treat you like an adult.

There's a way to look at it – anything that finds ways to keep smaller countries entering and mean that you don't have to be loaded to ever hope to stage it if you win, is a good thing. I can't imagine there's a precedent to make where a small poor country wins and then says "whoops I can't do this" and one of the rich countries gets stuck with staging. That's really going to please the Big 5 who already find it virtually impossible to score good points. It's possible that, taking out the organisational and political difficulties for a moment, Ukraine 2017 is a kind of a pilot for something that's strong on regionalism and cultural pride and short of excesses and budget-busting. I mean what did Timberlake have to do with Eurovision? It can only get so big before it looses the charm that made it unique.

I will say that it would be depressing if Dnipro was discounted for some silly reason. The consistency of their bid is definitely a major strength compared to other potential hosts, but it’s pretty unusual for a capital city not to host. I believe since 1990, there's only been six times it’s happened – Malmo (Sweden), 1992 and 2013; Millstreet (Ireland), 1993; Birmingham (UK), 1998 and Dusseldorf (Germany), 2010. Kiev was always gonna be the hot favourite. Their inexperience is showing up, but it to be expected, they are a young country, just 25 years old, who have had two revolutions in ten years and a war. It was always going to be difficult for them and they clearly need more help than most. Should that fact automatically discount them from trying to win? Or say San Marino who would be almost entirely reliant on Italy? FYR Macedonia? Poland big enough? Are we seriously going to start asking for a credible staging plan for every entrant before they are allowed to take part? I imagine Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Albania and a few other countries won't be trying again then, and forget about Portugal coming back (although wow what a rumour about them on wiwiblogs). Ukraine have won the right to make a tits up of it if they so wish. That's reality and I can't imagine they won't do everything they can, once they've decided where they are hosting it, to get it half way right. It won't be Sweden, it will be a bit chaotic and idiosyncratic, if they can manage to win with a song like 1944, they'll likely surprise again, and do remember, the British came so very close to screwing up the Olympics four years ago with the security issues and we have had a lot more practice at grand global events.

It comes down to what you want from your Eurovision – massive and over-the-top or not and whether you are prepared to sit through something that is imperfect but honestly so done by a smaller country trying their damnedest or not? If not, well it really limits the number of countries who can legitimately enter, doesn’t it?

I'm on annual leave today so will go through and confirm all of yesterday's sign-ups.

Keep 'em coming!

So far, I've received entries from:

21CB
avb
bigbrogeek
ChickensFromKiev
ESC Ross
EuroFoxi
Jaccobabe
Lisa.B
Nick1990
portugal
Sbrum1984
thengp12
thms
Only_You

If you've sent me something and your name is not on the list, get in touch!

Did you get my PM? Would you be able to let me know whether I got one of my choices early as I am working all day today and tomorrow so have limited time to make a change if I need to. Thanks

Waiting on 12 votes, will send reminders out later today.

Dnipro has withdrawn from the bidding process according to the General Director of the Ukrainian broadcaster NTU. Apparently the mayor of Dnipro became fed up with the constant postponing of the announcement of the host city (Tell me about it!) and stated that 2 months which could have been used for planning have gone to waste.

https://www.eurovisionary.com/2017-e...ement-delayed/

So it's just between Kiev & Odessa at this stage.