<!— Text ads —>

All countries

Jury members for the Eurovision 2018 revealed

Andy on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 11:33

The outcome of the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest will be decided bythe public, alongside a group of expert juries in each of the 43 participating countries. Today EBU has announced the names of the 215 music industry professions who will cast their votes in the Semi-Finals and Grand Final of this year's contest.

⬇️ Download the full list of jury members (.pdf)
https://service.accredion.com/file/b1c27e16-2af7-4a93-89dc-7eb736a988f5…

Each national jury is made up of five music industry professionals who will evaluate each entry. The jury members are asked to judge the vocal capacity of the singer, the performance on stage, the composition and originality of the song and the overall impression of the act. Jurors rank all entries, except their own country's contribution.

There are strict admission rules in order to become a member of the jury.
Members of the jury must not have been part of the jury in the previous two years;
Members of the jury must be at least 16 years old on the day they vote;
Members of the jury must not be employees of Participating Broadcasters;
Members of the jury must pursue a profession in or related to the music industry;
Members of the jury shall be citizens of the country they represent;
No member of a jury shall be connected in any way with any of the participating songs entered and/or artists performing in the contest in such a way that they cannot vote in complete independence and impartiality.
Juries are selected by the Participating Broadcaster that represents each country. For example; the Belgian jury is appointed by VRT, while the Greek jury is appointed by the ERT, and so on.

A total of 215 jurors — five in each of the 43 participating countries — will vote. Each broadcaster also appoints a backup juror, in case one of the five jury members becomes unavailable (not listed).
The youngest juror, aged 16, comes from Estonia. The oldest, at 74, is part of the Croatian jury;
The average age of the jurors is 40.8 years old, just a few months older than last year's average;
102 jurors are female, 113 are male;
Georgia, Lithuania and Montenegro all invited professors to their jury.
Several of this year's jurors have previously participated in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The list includes two winners; Emmelie de Forest won the contest 2013 for Denmark and Niamh Kavanagh won the 1993 contest for Ireland;
Bob Savenberg, who represented Belgium as part of the group Clouseau in 1991;
Hanne Haugsand, who represented Norway as part of the group Charmed in 2000;
Tom Dice, who represented Belgium in 2010;
Cristina Scarlat, who sang for Moldova in 2014;
Bojana Stamenov, who represented Serbia in 2015;
Aminata Savadogo, who represented Latvia in 2015;
Amber, who represented Malta in 2015;
Laura Tesoro, who represented Belgium in 2016.

Press centre carnage on the first day?

Day one is always a little difficult - we know this from years of attending - but we were really surprised at just how taxing some of the issues could be. First the terrible weather when queuing this morning was a real let down, and they would not open the security tent area even 10 minutes early so that the 60+ press people could at least shelter

Eventually when it was opened there were issues with all the "P" accreditation passes not functioning, which meant manually checking the whole queue and their passes. Not a great start.

That aside we entered the press centre with an open mind and first task of the day was preparing the interview lists. Always a huge drama for us to deal with - and this year was no different. Several hours - or at least it felt like it - later the first lists started to appear....oh well

The press centre itself is a story in itself - the working area, the press conference area and the interview rooms are all separated by some distance....we will see how this plays out later today. Additionally the press working area is probably the smallest I have seen ever. There will be a shortage of desks much later this week. It's already pretty full on day one

On positive notes the on screen rehearsals started on time, we had sound, and we had wifi!!!

More news coming up later when we settle in a little

ESCKAZ team english review of all the songs

The English side of the ESCKAZ.com team reviewed all the songs last night in a two part podcast. In a slightly different version from the Russian speakers the team, joined by Andrew Webster from Slovenia and one colleague from the Russian side, Sergej, the team listened to all the songs, with accompanying alcohol, and gave their honest opinions on each in turn.
Clip is split into two parts, there are some things there we know fans will hate, and some we know that fans will love - it's a personal taste thing really. Hope you enjoy and fell free to comment

New City, New reporting rules - important post

New Host City, new Eurovision reporting rules

In an unannounced new move yesterday, the EBU and RTP, in conjunction with accreditation provider Accredion have published new rules concerning access rights and what media can and cannot use in regard to performance clips filmed during open rehearsals

At ESCKAZ.com we have long advocated a cessation to these clips being prepared and published, and have only continued to do so as the reduction in statistics would mean we would lose almost all accreditations and be unable to bring you blogging, press conferences, reports from the parties, eurovillage and euroclub, and interviews with the artists. So while we welcome and embrace these new rules we are cautious of their sudden appearance 48 hours before live rehearsals start.

In summary the new rules in regard to rehearsal footage are as follows

No material from rehearsals - either photos or video - maybe be released to personal social media accounts from members of the press. Material maybe be released to company social media accounts but subject to restrictions
Media which are EBU members are permitted to use up to three (3) minutes from the rehearsal content per day. Non EBU members may use up to two (2) minutes per day.
Post contest it would appear that material maybe released in full - but we will try to clarify this
There is little or no information of how many photographs maybe be published or used
The use of the Press Conference Material and of the Opening Ceremony Material is unrestricted.

We are actively seeking answers from the EBU/RTP on what we may or may not do with any material we have collected after the dates indicated in the new rules - which correspond to the the end of the shows. We will bring you this information as and when we have it

These new rules are published on Eurovision.tv and given to all press members as they collect accreditation passes.

Therefore this year ESCKAZ.com will only bring you very limited footage from the rehearsals - not something we are unhappy about if truth be told - but will of course bring you all our usual coverage from Press Conferences, Interviews, live reaction videos as the rehearsals are seen in the press centre, reports from Delegation parties, Euroclub, Eurovillage, blogging and finally as many photos as we can get for all the fans to see.