I enjoyed it this year, although I don’t think there was as many standouts as previously.
Watched the semis and the final with friends, we may have disagreed over our favourite songs, there was one thing which was unanimous, Julia and Sam are sorely missed.
EBU statement on Måneskin in the ESC Green Room during the Grand Final
We are aware of the speculation surrounding the video clip of the Italian winners of the Eurovision Song Contest in the Green Room last night. The band have strongly refuted the allegations of drug use and the singer in question will take a voluntary drug test after arriving home. This was requested by them last night but could not be immediately organized by the EBU. The band, their management and head of delegation have informed us that no drugs were present in the Green Room and explained that a glass was broken at their table and it was being cleared by the singer. The EBU can confirm broken glass was found after an on site check. We are still looking at footage carefully and will update with further information in due course.
The padding out of the prime time show is ridiculous. The broadcast was on for 20 minutes before they got to the first song, and then it was straight to an ad break. And if I hear Joel Creasey make a gag about “Karl Stefanovic” being the host one more time…
And I did tune out a bit towards the end last night but did SBS show the rooftop performances of the past Eurovision winners? I must have missed it, or did it get cut out from the prime time replay?
To make it worse, SBS went to a long ad break during the live final voting and were 3 countries behind in the voting by the end. I had to switch to Youtube so I wouldn’t be spoiled.
I just made the same comment in the ratings thread. They must have cut it out completely. It’s a shame because that was a highlight for me.
I’ve been watching recordings of the morning broadcasts but because I was out of town on the weekend, I decided to watch Sundays evening broadcast. I happened to catch parts of the morning broadcast live though, which is why I new knew about the performances by the past winners.
Also, some viewers would be watching it on the Satellite Pay TV channels these days. The show is broadcast on a number of European pay tv channels into Australia.
Speaking of which, this year I had access to the live broadcast from Cyprus on Rik Sat on Sunday morning. I noticed that during the performances SBS was about 30 seconds behind the satellite broadcast from Cyprus. Then by the time they got to Joel Creasey announcing Australia’s points, SBS was about 2-3 minutes behind the other broadcast. Does this mean SBS delays the “live” broadcast to fit in more adverts?
probably. A friend of ours in the Netherlands had texted us to respond to one of the country’s votes and we didn’t see that country’s result here until a few minutes later.
@sav001 said above that SBS inserted an extra commercial break in during the results which is where it fell behind a few minutes. I was watching live and wouldn’t have known otherwise. There were still very few ad breaks overall compared to the prime time coverage.
I agree with this. I wouldn’t mind if they just introduced the show and appeared just before the points were announced. That would be more than enough. They made the show longer than it needed to be. Did they cut the performance from the Eurovision Winners in the Evening broadcast? I was fast forwarding a lot so not sure whether I missed it or they cut it out.
Most of the ‘traditionalists’ would have been watching the ‘live’ (air-quotes because SBS inexplicitly eventually delays it) broadcast. The primetime replay is mainly for casual viewers