It was an exciting week and two excellent shows. The vote is in and, no Iceland didn�t win (Silvia Night was 13th in the semi as it turns out), but Finland has its first Eurovision win in 44 tries. Here�s a brief rundown on what some of the numbers mean.
Finland’s Lordi scored a record 292 points—in both the final and semi-final—besting Ruslana’s 2004 record score of 280 points for Ukraine. Only Albania and Monaco blanked Finland. Russia’s Dima Bilan came second with 248 points—still more than Helena Paparizou’s 2005 win for Greece (230). Monaco and Switzerland were the only null points for Dima, who is now tied with Alsou (2000, Solo) for Russia’s best ever result.
Only two of the pre-qualified songs ended up in the top 10—same as last year. However this year Romania were 4th and Greece 9th; Greece and Malta were 1st and 2nd last year. And sadly this year Malta finished last, with only a single point from Albania. Greece is now the only non-Big 4 country to avoid relegation entirely since 2004. Romania scored points from every country except Monaco and the Netherlands—no other song scored points as widely. It appears likely that Monaco again reverted to a jury rather than a televote. The unlucky qualifiers from this year are Turkey and FYR Macedonia; having finished 11th and 12th in today’s final means they must qualify again next year. All the other qualifiers go automatically through next year.
Long time Eurovision success stories Ireland (9th) and Sweden (5th) both returned from the semi-final and into the top 10 after bad results last year. Newcomer Armenia must be very pleased: their 6th in the semi-final and 8th in the final are an excellent début! And Lithuania, while not the winners, should be proud of their 6th place in the final.
The Big 4 did marginally better than last year…but not well. Germany leapt from 24th in 2005 to 15th this year, but with a song many British fans thought would win it all. The UK moved up from 22nd to 19th (and point-wise from 18 to 28), though they had hopes of a top 10 finish. Spain remained 21st for the second year in a row as their score dropped from 28 to 18. France moved up a single notch to 22nd, while France’s score dropped from 11 to 5: clearly il n’était pas temps for Virginie.
