It's a ho-hum song, out of a pretty uninspiring field. Out of the six songs on offer, I think only Asanda had the potential to make any real impression in the sprawling musical theatre of the Eurovision final.
But whatever. The Uk has spoken...will of the people and all that.
Now, the BBC announced that, for the first time, for the UK finals they would be using the new voting formula that was unveiled by the proper Eurovision competition in 2016 - adding up the jury votes, then assigning points to the artists according to public votes. Both votes - jury and public - each have a 50% weight. A full and simple breakdown of how this new system works can be found here.
But don't take our word for it. This is from the BBC's own website on voting format:
Following the introduction of a revised scoring system in the ESC Final in 2016, the importance of an entry being able to impress both the voting public AND expert juries has become more explicit and by using both in our national selection we are recognising that fact.
Our public vote and our jury vote both take place immediately after all 6 songs have been performed in the live TV show and we do not reveal the result of the jury vote prior to the public vote, or vice versa. It is important that neither vote influences the other - just as in the ESC.
Once both votes are complete and verified, they will each reveal a ranking of the 6 songs from 1st to 6th. The rankings will then be used to award points from 6 (1st position) to 1 (6th position) for each vote.
The points each song has been awarded by both votes are then added together. The song with the highest combined total of points will be declared the winner. In the event of a tie break for first position, the song which received more points in the public vote will be declared the winner.
As happened with the ESC Final in 2016, a win of only the jury vote or only the public vote doesn't guarantee an overall win. The song that will win, is the one that performs best across BOTH the public and jury vote, so the artists need to impress both the jury AND the public as their votes have equal weighting – apart from the tie-break situation where the public vote is the decider.
So, because I'm a stats geek, I am really interested in how the votes for the UK heats broke down - who the judges liked best, who the public preferred, and how these two votes tallied to contribute to the final results.
And here's the rub. We simply don't know the final results. We know who won, because SuRie was announced. But that's all we know. We don't know who came second, how many points SuRie won, how many people voted for her...nothing. The BBC hasn't released a full breakdown. They simply announced, on air, who had won.
Now that's just not on.
When the public voted either by text or phone, they were charged 15p by the BBC (on top of whatever cost your network provider charges).
I think it's only fair that we know exactly where the votes that we paid for went. The BBC's own phone-in voting guidelines, states:
One result, the winner, was half reported to the paying audience. And the there is absolutely no evidence that the vote 'fairly and accurately reflects the opinion of the voting audience'. I'm not saying that it doesn't, but it'd be nice to know.
To that end, I've submitted a freedom of information request to the BBC, as a public body, for a full breakdown of the results:
Now, the BBC announced that, for the first time, for the UK finals they would be using the new voting formula that was unveiled by the proper Eurovision competition in 2016 - adding up the jury votes, then assigning points to the artists according to public votes. Both votes - jury and public - each have a 50% weight. A full and simple breakdown of how this new system works can be found here.
But don't take our word for it. This is from the BBC's own website on voting format:
Following the introduction of a revised scoring system in the ESC Final in 2016, the importance of an entry being able to impress both the voting public AND expert juries has become more explicit and by using both in our national selection we are recognising that fact.
Our public vote and our jury vote both take place immediately after all 6 songs have been performed in the live TV show and we do not reveal the result of the jury vote prior to the public vote, or vice versa. It is important that neither vote influences the other - just as in the ESC.
Once both votes are complete and verified, they will each reveal a ranking of the 6 songs from 1st to 6th. The rankings will then be used to award points from 6 (1st position) to 1 (6th position) for each vote.
The points each song has been awarded by both votes are then added together. The song with the highest combined total of points will be declared the winner. In the event of a tie break for first position, the song which received more points in the public vote will be declared the winner.
As happened with the ESC Final in 2016, a win of only the jury vote or only the public vote doesn't guarantee an overall win. The song that will win, is the one that performs best across BOTH the public and jury vote, so the artists need to impress both the jury AND the public as their votes have equal weighting – apart from the tie-break situation where the public vote is the decider.
So, because I'm a stats geek, I am really interested in how the votes for the UK heats broke down - who the judges liked best, who the public preferred, and how these two votes tallied to contribute to the final results.
Now that's just not on.
One result, the winner, was half reported to the paying audience. And the there is absolutely no evidence that the vote 'fairly and accurately reflects the opinion of the voting audience'. I'm not saying that it doesn't, but it'd be nice to know.
To that end, I've submitted a freedom of information request to the BBC, as a public body, for a full breakdown of the results:
Will keep you posted.
