Time to do something about the juries

Last night I tweeted how disappointing it was to see the juries do Finland dirty. Some people interpreted that as me being a bad loser (the eurovision online fans were always easy to rub the wrong way) but this goes back to something I have been saying for many years: the jury system needs to be reformed.

I repeat myself - just to be very clear - that this is not a case about Loreen. She was a well deserved winner if you ask me, even if the viewers at home largely disagreed.

To be perfectly clear: I don't want the juries gone. I am a big fan of juries and I support the idea that juries should reward things the televoting crowds could overlook on a first listen. But that's not what the juries are doing.

In recent years, time and time again the juries have punished edgy and creative entries and instead rewarded safer efforts instead. This problem is however far from new.

Ever since the current points system was introduced in 1975, the way the juries vote has one big flaw. When a group of people decide their points together, the winner will be a compromise. Instead of rewarding the most relevant och interesting songs, a jury is going to reward the songs that most people can agree upon and like at least a bit.

Everything that displeases one or several jurors - maybe for being too contemporary, for being too experimental, for being too commercial or even for not being "a suitable ESC entry" - will get punished in a jury system like this.

We have also seen many times how being part of a jury really can put people on the highest of horses: suddenly they refuse anything fun or lightweight or hit friendly in favour of more serious and "sophisticated" things. That's when a worldwide hit single like Gina G's "Ooh Aah Just A Little Bit" ends up with a disappointing 8th place.

The current formula of jurors ranking all the songs from first to last is not helping things. A full ranking of all the songs will inevitably become a bit arbitrary in the middle. Most people can easily identify their top favourites and the songs clearly placed at the bottom of their list. But the entries in between?

Say that a juror doesn't care for a specific song, it can still make a world of difference if they randomly place it 9th or if they randomly place it 21st.

I would like to see two major changes made to the jury system:

1. How the jurors are selected. 

These people impact the result in a big way, why are they the right people to do it? The jurors should be real professionals that don't just know music - they should also be able to read the room, pick up on what feels exciting and vibrant and also judge entries on the correct merits. (Not all entries should be judged on pitch perfect vocals, for instance, unless perfect vocals are the selling point of the entry.) I want to see less "friends of the delegations" and more people from outside the ESC bubble do the job.

2. How the jurors vote. 

I would like to remove - as far as possible - the chance for individual jurors to vote down anything they don't like. I want the jurors to vote FOR songs they like, not AGAINST things they don't get. I even have an idea how that could be possible but let's save that for another day. 

I also want full transparency of how individual jurors voted, I find that essential in order to maintain the good name of the contest.

I think the current split 50/50 between jury and televote makes for great television, so I wouldn't want to change that. I just think we have the right to expect more bravery from the jurors. If not, what is the point in having them?

Last night, the entry that won the televote in eighteen countries got nul points from no less than fourteen juries. That really isn't a feather in the hat for the current system. It needs a change and it needs it now.

Screenshot from Wikipedia