During last week's meeting of the Eurovision Song Contest's governing body, the Reference Group, an EBU proposal to return from full-show televoting to a limited televoting window was approved. The meeting was the first of the newly installed Reference Group.
The Reference Group decided to, as from 2012, restore the opening of the televoting window
after the last song has been performed, instead of
before the first song. Initially, the change was introduced to give viewers the opportunity to vote throughout the show like during many other television programmes, and to vote instantly when a song is on.
However, analysis of voting data shows that an overwhelming majority of viewers still votes after the last song. Another argument to drop the full-show voting is the appearance of graphics during the show, which take up as many as 25 percent of the screen due to the required legal information and thereby distracts from the artistic performance.
Even though analysis shows that full-show televoting does not put anyone in a competitive disadvantage and that the position in the running order does not favour contestants performing early in the show, the EBU does value the fact that some viewers perceive it as more fair to vote after all contestants have performed.
A decision about the length of the televoting window will be taken at a later stage in the lead up to the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, which is scheduled to take place on 22, 24 and 26 May in Azerbaijan.
Well I was hoping for a comeback of the old presentation of the votes. Lol. You know the one we had before 2006... Ah dreams!
Anyway, I'm fine with it. Plus it will let us nagging about the running order! Hahahaha If our favourite song has a draw between 1 and let's say 7, we'll be like "oh it would have made it the draw was #18!"! All this "nagging" might be annoying as well but hey, that's Eurovision! There will always be reactions like this one!
