JOY Eurovision

26 Sep 2013

The Update: New Rules, Who’s In & New Music

This is The Update – a (semi) regular news post, keeping you up to speed with the happenings of Eurovision 2014 and the doings of the 2013 entrants. What’s new? The EBU release the revised rule handbook and TRT gets ready to chat with the EBU.

New Rules for 2014

The EBU has released the rules for the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. The body of the rulebook has remained the same, with the major changes being the way in which the juries vote. In releasing the new rules, Eurovision’s Executive Producer, Jon Ola Sand, commented that,

“Tighter rules and increased openness are important for the Eurovision Song Contest to build on its success to make sure participants, viewers and fans know that we have done and will always do our utmost to secure a fair result. These changes show that the Eurovision Song Contest is an ever evolving tradition, which continues to adapt to the spirit of time.”

In summary, the main rule changes are:

The names of all jury members will be announced on 1 May;
Each individual jury member’s ranking of the songs in each show will be published after the Grand Final;
The split results of jury voting and televoting for each country will be published; and
Music industry professionals can only be part of a national jury if they have not been in the jury during one of the previous two editions of the Contest.

The EBU also announced that the Eurovision website will now include a section for people to report voting issues, which can be investigated by the EBU, the company in charge of the voting systems, Digame, and their auditors, PwC.

Ins & Outs

More news has been travelling the interwebs about who is in and who is out of next year’s Contest in Copenhagen. So far:

Definitely in

Latvia, Montenegro and Spain have just confirmed their participation in next year’s Contest. They will be joining Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Switzerland, Iceland, Russia, FYR Macedonia, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Malta, Georgia, The Netherlands and Albania as confirmed entrants.

Probably in

Italy has joined Lithuania, Slovenia, Hungary, Moldova, Portugal, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Belarus as being likely possibilities to join the 2014 crew.

Probably out

Turkey remains the only country to be 80% sure that they won’t be heading to Copenhagen. However, the Turkish broadcaster TRT are planning to meet with EBU representatives to come to an agreement about participating in 2014. Turkey originally explained that the voting processes and the inclusion of the Big 5 were the reasons for not competing. With the rule changes introduced around the jury vote, the EBU is hoping to persuade Turkey to join the rest of Europe in Copenhagen.

Definitely out

Croatia, Monaco, Morocco, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Andorra and Luxembourg are currently the only countries to have certainly ruled themselves out for 2014.

The next JOYEurovision Update will have all the deets about the National Selections.

New Releases

Lithuanian Andrius Pojavis has released a brand new single called Play Your Game. The rock-pop song also comes with a home-made video clip. Obviously budgetary issues are crippling the Lithuanian music industry…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk15GXXAq8

The woman famous for that kiss on stage has a new album. Krista Siegfrids, who represented Finland, has released her second single Amen!, which is from her first album Ding Dong!

Cascada also has some new music. The German group released The World is In My Hands, another dancefloor filler and contender for addition to the JOY Music Mix.