We all know how the voting goes each year at Eurovision as the results are announced country by country. At the beginning most every act has moments of hope. Then with a few more announcements we see six or seven pull ahead. But still there's the tension as we don't know which will win.
And then a few more countries announce and we see it drop down to 2 or 3 clear leaders. And we see some contention between those leaders. We may even see the front runner change at times. But then we hit the point where about two thirds of the votes have been announced and the winner is clear.
Even worse, we then hit a point with 10 or so countries still to announce their vote and the winner is clear. Where no matter the remaining votes, the leading country cannot lose. At this point the remaining vote announcements have lost any semblance of tension. We're just going through the motions waiting to celebrate the winner.
The EBU has come up with a brilliant way to keep the suspense up until the announcement of the final vote. They will first announce the results as before, country by country, but only the jury component of the vote. So we'll see the ranking of the acts and their total points. But for only half of the vote.
The televote for every country will be combined into a single vote. It is still 1 to 12 points per country so each country retains equal weight. From that combined vote they determine the top acts and assign them the appropriate 1 to 12 points. Therefore the top act in the televote across all countries then gets 12 point in every country.
These results will be announced at the end of the voting, starting with the act getting 1 point and working up to the top act getting 12 points. As each is announced, the final results will be adjusted to show the new score and rankings.
This changes everything!
First off, we won't know the winner until they announce these last 10 vote totals. When it gets down to the acts receiving 8, 10 and 12 points all of Europe will be on the edge of their seats (unless the jury vote is a total blowout). With acts being jumped up as the televotes are read out, the possibilities will seem open-ended.
Second, one act will receive 12 votes for the televote as the televote component in every country. The same for every other televote allocation. This will strongly favor acts that appeal over a broad cross-section of Europe. This could have a significant negative impact on bloc voting (which is a very good thing).
What do you think? Will this make the end more exciting? Or do you think it'll be an artificial attempt? Let us know what you think in the comments below.