[LMBTO] The final act of Eurovision 2017 - OGAE SCC 2017 results...

Okay, I got that totally wrong, didn't I?  The total opposite of a 'tight contest', almost a 'Euphoria' or 'Fairytale' landslide!  Unfortunately for our Polish hosts, it must have made the production of this presentation incredibly difficult but I'm going to stick with the positives of the 40 minute show, their actual show being one of them...

Using up to date technology to present the results on Facebook Live was a bold decision and it worked really well!  Luckily I wasn't working last Saturday so I could watch it as it all unfolded - perhaps having a timing similar to Eurovision might make it even more of a superb experience.  There were no technical hitches, although the sound quality within the venue where the results were collated was a bit echoey and I'm not really sure that having 'models' in front of the flags of the voting nations was really that interesting!  To be fair, there was as much tension there as we were to experience later on.  The hosts could have done with slowing down their chat too - they had more than enough time to fill!

OGAE Poland showed the 22 entries in an order that I hadn't seen before - when the listing was submitted for jurors like me to vote on, it was in alphabetical order and therefore Albania were up first.  I felt that this was quite refreshing, as there was then no tinkering with the order, no subconscious or conscious preferences by individuals, the songs were watched A-Z.  I mentioned this on Facebook as the show was running and the hosts told me that they had always had a set order with Ella from Norway opening the 'show'.  News to me - not that it would have made any difference as we had the chance to view these entries as many times as we wanted, no running order would have changed what I thought about each song.  Here is the actual final 'producer led' order:

If this had been Eurovision, I would have to say that it was a decent list - Ella kicking the show off would have got everyone up for the rest of the night.  Demy wouldn't have appreciated the 'death slot' though but her C&W ballad stood out between "Mama's Boy" and "One".  Holly Brewer performing at slot ten would have been a reasonable place to sing and strangely prophetic, whereas Sweden leading out the second half after an 'interval break' would have been to Mariette's benefit.  In my eyes, Kerli had been given a superb slot at 21, the penultimate song but this was all too late to change the votes of the jurors like me who had used the alphabetical list...


33 Nations voted - Australia included!
A decent selection of nations there voting - eleven guest juries in addition to the 22 singing ones.  Not so many from the Balkans or from other parts of Eastern Europe but otherwise a varied swathe of Eurovision fandom.  Each got their chance to present their scores - there were several who didn't and OGAE Poland had to do the presenting for them.  I have to say that I can't imagine it is that difficult to set up a cam and read out some scores but there you go, we had individuals, including our own Gary Speirs, who was celebrating his 25th year as spokesperson!  Well done, Gary:
Talking of Gary, I'll slip in here the scores from the UK jury:

By the time that Gary read out our scores, I realised that my thoughts on Kerli winning the SCC this year was totally wide of the mark!  I had matched EIGHT of the UK's ten nations but none in the right order - Slovenia and Lithuania were in, my selections of Estonia and Portugal were out.  I was quite pleased that Ella was top for her amazing unique performance in Norway - I was also glad that a certain country wasn't a stonewall douze points, which seemingly was occurring all over the other 32 nations...

Even Eurovision provides this 'trick' - put up a country who got maximum marks but isn't going to win first!  At this stage I was really pleased with how the scoreboard looked - maybe Kerli was going to be the winner this year!  Looking back on the scores, maybe the fact it was from Estonia's neighbour Russia and the scores supplied by someone standing in Tallinn, possibly in a spot that I stood on a guided tour in March, might have explained the twelve points and a hint of favouritism!  This was possibly the only vote where the OGAE Second Chance Contest 2017 was all to play for - from jury 2 through to 33, it became quickly obvious what the pattern of the evening was going to be...

Spain awarding their twelve points was the last time that any other nation (Italy, for one mark) was at the top of the leaderboard for the OGAE Second Chance Contest 2017.  After those set of scores, Sweden never left top spot and it became a matter of how many points would they score, how many maximum 12s would Mariette get and, as far as I was concerned as a UK juror, where would the UK finish?  The voting reached its natural conclusion and confirmation of the win for Mariette with the Greek jury giving Sweden another 12 points, still with SEVEN juries left to vote:

Let's deal with Sweden first:

Apart from loading all the other maximum scores that other nations got in the first half of the comments, there was absolutely nothing that OGAE Poland could do to make the presentation of the scores any more exciting or tense.  Italy got three 12s, as did Slovenia but the rest were nowhere, as you could see from the Final scoreboard:

I have looked through the results video again and there really is no point capping any more juries, as it all became very predictable, with Sweden very rarely not receiving one of the top three marks from any nation.  It was indeed a relief that the whole process lasted 40 minutes, such was the anticlimactic nature of it all.  The only interest left as a UK juror was how Holly Brewer did and as you can see above...

Compared to the landslide win by Sweden, it is quite small beer but for the OGAE UK fandom, getting any act into the top ten in any Contest is currently a big deal!  The UK received scores from 18 juries, the highest being a ten from Latvia.  An improvement on last year and our best finish here since 2007.  Nice one Holly:

You did the UK proud!

This was really the only other thing of note amongst all of the remaining jury scores!

And so the winner of the OGAE Second Chance Contest was Mariette with"A Million Years":

Third at Melodifestivalen 2017 and now giving Sweden their SIXTEENTH victory (as Retrospective SCC's are now included):

There was a couple of year gap but Sweden are back on it!  I wonder if that means we will have a 'late result' show, like in 2015...

My thoughts on this year's Second Chance Contest?

• All very exciting and enjoyable, at least as far as the process of listening to the 22 entries and voting was concerned.  This was matched by the earlier voting for the UK entry.  Unfortunately, as you can see from the results show above, any tension or entertainment was rapidly drained away by the continual high scores for Mariette from jury 2 onwards - poor old OGAE Poland, not much they could do to increase the entertainment value of this show

• Well done to Holly for the UK, getting a decent spread of scores and finishing tenth - we grab hold of any joy we can get in the UK at the moment!
• I know that my rankings are often at odds with a large cross section of Eurovision fans, especially other OGAE ones, but I am quite surprised that Kerli finished so low in 11th - was there still a hardcore element of fans who couldn't see past "Verona" this year and ignored any other Estonian entry put forward?  For me and most of the audience in Tallinn in March, Koit and Laura were NOT the ones expected to win - I am still convinced that Estonia would have at least got to the Kyiv Final with "Spirit Animal" and probably have secured a top ten finish...

• "A Million Years" securing Sweden's 15/16th win in this Contest?  Don't get me wrong, I did like the song too (it got 8.0/10 and four points from me) but I have to say that I cannot understand the overwhelming love for this entry, so much so that it got maximum after maximum after maximum.  Could it be sympathy for her missing out on Kyiv?  Perhaps OGAE members have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Melodifestivalen, putting any entry from there on a pedestal and having to be really convinced to go for another entry from elsewhere.  To be fair to Sweden, Melodifestivalen does produce a lot of very good entries and it has amazing strength in depth which leads to most of their OGAE SCC entries being there or thereabouts at the end of the scoring.  I'm just not getting the landslide win this year. that's all.  Then again, I wasn't getting the love for Slovenia either...would it be 'cheeky' of me to say that the name of the award here summed up my feelings for their song?