Report in the Mirror that they are planning to replace phone voting with juries again.

It was me who brought in phone voting - I reckoned millions were more likely to give a fair vote than a dozen deaf locals.

Your views?

as long as the juries are not X factor people and anonymous, i think it would be fun.
I think a phone vote should be considered also though.

I'm not sure what they are planning. BBC Ceefax says that "A panel from each country will vote alongside the viewing public." So, are they going to continue the phone vote and have juries? If so, why? It's all still a bit unclear.

My own opinion is that I enjoy hearing the songs from different nations. I long ago lost interest in who wins, since the voting became a bit of a farce.

The semi finals will be decided in the same way as last year, namely nine songs from televoting and one from a jury vote.

The final will be decided by a blend of phone and jury votes. It has not yet been decided what weighting will be given to the juries.

This is really a response from the reference group to the public perception (largely unjustified in my opinion) of dodgy voting. It is also a popular decision among fans, though I never had a problem with televoting. Yes, there was always some distortion from all the various "diasporas" around Europe, but it almost without exception produced a better winner. A jury vote where everyone marks the songs out of ten is likely to produce a bland winner which everyone neither loves nor hates, and this is exactly what was tending to happen before juries were scrapped, Katrina excepted of course.

On the whole, I suppose the EBU has done the right thing. They need to keep the fans and casual viewers happy even if they are wrong!

I hate to correct you Anthony but Katrina was mainly a phone vote year - GinaG had a few big countries (most of which gave the UK 12 points) and they expanded to the majority in 1997 - indeed, I think that was one reason why we won so massively - the public voted.

I remember my "big change" for 1996 (after the failure of Love City Groove) was allowing the use of backing tracks - my secondary change was initiating phone votes.

I then went out full blast (with Kevin Bishop fighting on our behalf) to bring in full phone voting - by 1997 all countries with modern infrastructure who could do it had brought it in instead of juries.

I'm with R T Mason that I enjoy hearing the songs. Who wins isn't of that much importance to me. I haven't agreed with the results for many years. My favourite song is usually well down the ranking.

More than juries - rumours from the BBC report that Norton is ready to take over from Terry and that there will be a 6 week prime time X Factor type series with Andrew Lloyd Webber involved to find our entry.

Serious mistake in my book. The one solution is - put someone who knows what they are doing in charge. Only one name comes to mind and, of course, they dare not hire me.

Whatever did happen to Katie Boyle?

Bring her back I say Al.

A touch of class.

JK2006 wrote:
I hate to correct you Anthony but Katrina was mainly a phone vote year
You've suffered one of those false memories mentioned on the other board there, JK!

There was no phone voting in 1996. 97 was the year it was piloted, with about five or six televoting nations, including UK. Trust me, I'm a Eurovision doctor!