Even if you have your mates in the semi, it’s not guaranteed to get you through. No Ex-Yugoslav countries out of the four in the so-called bloc got a sniff of the final – that could also be because, shockingly, the decent songs got through. The EBU must be fuming.
Austria … didn’t get through because she screwed up the jury final – they stopped scoring her about 40 seconds into the performance, classic UK-style failure.
Croatia … because Europe didn’t get it – the juries probably did but …
Serbia … because dressing people in silly outfits and a bad song is a great idea (said no televoter ever).
Slovenia … because Hannah buggered up the jury performance and it was a weak song. Weaker than a weak thing performed weakly. The arena crowd went mad because it was something up-tempo, but everyone else saw right through it.
Cyprus … because no matter how hard you tried, the song simply wasn’t good enough.
Montenegro … spacesuits seemed a good idea to us, but then again …
Regarding Austria’s fate (and that of the UK in 11/12), why can’t the juries vote on the same performance as the viewers. They don’t and that’s why these myths arise.
Cyprus was REALLY flat, at least on TV. That can’t have helped it.
I didn’t notice Cyprus being flat, I thought she performed it well enough. Largely, the song was completely unmemorable, it was sung in a language that none of the voting countries would understand, and was a lesser song than all the other ballads in the contest so would have gained few televotes.
I guess the shock over the ex-Yugos is really not to do with the songs themselves but that we naturally assumed that they all would vote highly for each other (at least Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro – Slovenia has always been the poor relation when it comes to Eurovision). Therefore we assumed that they would have a stack of points in the bag before looking for the few extra ones from elsewhere to take them over the top.
I will be interested to see the breakdown of the votes next week to see how they voted for each other. I also wonder whether the change to the voting system by ranking all of the songs has made a difference.