Saturday night Finland kicked-off its search for the song to represent the country on home ground when Helsinki hosts the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest. It all went fine until the voting figures were supposed to be given out. What really happened? What are the correct results?
"One of the computer used for the graphics to display the voting figures in blocks crashed" says Finnish Broadcaster YLE’s Timo Suomi. "It was supposed to show the votes inserted manually in blocks but failed. The results published on YLE’s website shortly after the show were auditted and correct." He continued, "There were no problems with the phone calls and SMS, and that all worked fine." "People worried for May should not be, the programme used in the Eurovision Song Contest is completely different and fully secured," Suomi finally reassured.
In the live show the presenters Jaana Pelkonen and Heikki Paasonen watched with Jani Forsman from Jani & Jetsettersas their Musta sulhanen got 70% and Etupenkillä only 30% of the votes (while the real and confirmed results showed 53% against 47%). Everything looked normal at this point.
When it was Hanna Pakarinen’s turn the graphics gave Tell me what to do 60% and Leave me alone 40%. Visibly disappointed Hanna and the surprised presenters started to comment onthe vote when they were informed in their earpieces that the resultswere wrong. “Are you joking?” asked Hanna moments before Leave me alone was declared as the qualifier after all. Thevotes as later confirmed were 69% for Leave me alone, 31% for Tell me what to do.
The computer and graphics were completely sacked when it was Thunderstone’s turn and lead singers Pasi Rantanen and Heikki entertained the audience by singing Play-boy while waiting for the results. Rantanensaid that he would like Forevermore to qualify. But Finns decided against his wish, and Face in the mirror qualified with 64% of the votes (confirmed later).When it was time to see the recap of qualified entries the audience had a laugh with Jaana’s comment “Let’s see what they show us!" However, the video clips shown werethe right ones.
YLE’s Aila Havia-Venäläinen told esctoday.com today, "They’re fixing the computer program and are very confident everything will be in order next Saturday." YLE total number of calls will probably be announced only after the final.
