For the past few years, the Eurovision final voting sequence has used the format where the jury votes are first revealed, followed by the televotes. When the televotes are presented, they are presented in ascending order. This has lead to dramatic moments, such as last year when Sweden after coming second in the jury vote – heard their televotes announced early in the televote sequence because of the relatively low score.
For 2019, EBU has confirmed there will be a change to this. The jury vote announcements will stay the same, however when we get to the televote the order of the unveiling will happen based on the ascending order of the jury votes. This means we will know exactly the order in which the televotes are announced.
If this was employed last year, Cyprus would have received their televotes fifth to last and ascended to the leading position. But, two countries later, Israel would have received their televotes and surpassed them. This means the dramatic moment would have come down to finding out if Sweden or Austria had enough televotes to surpass Israel. We would have known Cyprus could not have won much sooner in the final moments of the revelations.
Of course, this only changes the order in which things are presented. None of the underlying procedure of tabulation is changing. This is simply an effort on the part of the EBU to increase the drama and entertainment value of a voting sequence that has come under scrutiny lately for being lengthy and anti-climactic at times.
What do you think of the new approach?