Eurovision 2019 I EBU Reveals National Jury Members
Thunder and Lightning it's getting exciting! April is almost over and the month we have all been waiting for, May, the Eurovision Song Contest, is just around the corner. After releasing the rehearsal Dates recently, the EBU revealed new Information for the Eurovision week.
It has been announced that 205 Jury members, from 41 different countries (5 members for each Country) have just been revealed. These 205 people, have 50% of the Overall votes in the contest.
Each Country will give 2 sets of votes with the same amount of points (12 for the favourite, 10 for the second favorite and then 8 down to 1 for the Top 10). One of the sets will come from the national televoting and the other one from the national juries. National juries have a big Tradition in the Eurovision Song Contest:
From 1956 until 1996, the whole Voting System was only based on "music experts". They functioned as a representative for the country. From 1998 until 2009, the points were only given from the televoters, Juries were only established as a backup for technical issues. Facing more and more criticism for "Diaspora", so the systematic Voting for neighbours and friendly countries no matter what song they were sending, the EBU changed the System again to a split Voting consisting of national juries and televoting, both counting 50% for the whole result.
So as one can see, Jury members have quite a big influence into the overall results. In some years, the Jury favourite actually won the whole contest without being the televote favorite. One example is Mans Zelmerlöw's victory in 2015 for Sweden, Winning the Jury voting but only came 3rd in the televoting.
Taking a look at the Jury members, there shows a big range of the demograph, with ages ranging from 16 (Maltese singer Nicole Frendo) to 82 (Croatian Composer Silvestar Glojnaric). The age average is 41. The Jury have 96 female and 109 male members in total.
As always, the national juries consist of several former ESC Artists. Some of them are Michael Schulte (Germany 2018), Mario Olafsdottir (Iceland 2015), the Tolmacheva Sisters Anastasia & Maria (Russia 2014) and Kati Wolf (Hungary 2011). Some countries like the United Kingdom have also opted to use pop stars like Sophie Ellis Bextor. There does seem to be a wide range of people used this year.
What do you think of the Jury members of this year? How do you like the current voting system in general? Let us know down in the comments!
