ETSC 6: Discover the Winner!

ETSC – Every year, the summer is the calm after the storm so it’s the perfect time to resume the highly anticipated the Eurovision Times Song Contest! 45 of you entered for the August 2016 edition and the voting went on for ten days! And the results are in and we have a winner!

Each summer, a good number of regular readers stay around for different reasons (they don’t get breaks from work or don’t go on holidays…) but there aren’t much news to keep us going. So the last few years we introduced all sort of games. The Eurovision Times Awards (Fridas) and the Douze Points Trivia Quiz kept us going in 2013 and Fridas have made come-backs the past four years. Two years ago, a lot of you asked for a fake Eurovision where each one of us would send songs and get to vote. And that was it: the Eurovision Times Song Contest, from then on known as ETSC.

After a first round open for people to sign up with a country and send a song, we got 45 people in, with a few of our regulars missing (Cathal, Mermaid, Jade, Hulluna, Stommie) but still newbies joining! Hopefully, they all will make appearances in comments. But also some people who returned from last summer and from FDLC (Mylor, Ren, Daniel…). Songs were revealed ten days ago, using a random draw with my computer. I also made personal postcards for each entry which will be revealed along with the songs. Everyone can still request to see their own postcards in full size.

Results lasted for 4h! 1327 comments later… You can rewatch the songs by clicking the picture below:

t was two weeks ago that we discovered each song individually in a dramatic night reveal-show. And after that, each of the 44 players cast a vote. All votes are now in and we have a winner (also a full ranking, obviously). So gather around, for “ETSC 6, August 2016″ is about to come to an end!

This sixth event is officially hosted in Jerusalem, Israel after “Gold Shadow” by Asaf Avidan won “ETSC 5, July2016″. A somewhat innovative host, as it’ll be entirely animated by Ari Folman‘s work! The venue was the Al-Hakawati Theater.

Here are the full results (click to see in big):

So the winner is Denmark! The song is “Sky” by Blaue Blume. The Copenhagen-based group was formed in 2014 by Jonas Smith, Søren Jensen Buhl, Peter Bøgvad, Robert Jensen Buhl. Their first album was released early this week and is called “Syzygy“! The winning song is the first single from the album. About the clip, the group talks about it: “We found this old deserted building in the middle of nowhere on one of the bigger islands of Denmark. It seemed like the forest around had somehow absorbed the place over time. Trees and plants grew from cracks in the walls and made the border between nature and this cold industrial aesthetics very blurry. The song itself have a hard time distinguishing dream from reality and therefore we found the place to be an ideal symbol of it. The video was shot in one day and we had very few things planned actually. It was basically all about having fun, filming and then use whatever footage that would come out of it. We had this verse from a poem by Baudelaire called “Le Masque” (The mask) in the back our heads while forming the short narrative story. He describes an allegoric statue in renaissance style.”

It was chosen for this contest by Marc P, who wins it for the second time after finishing 13th and 14th in the last two editions. The winner got points from 23 people out of 43 possible! It got 171pts total, which is 8 points shy from Asaf’s record last edition, and represents 33.1% of possible points (third best to France in ETSC 1 which recieved 47.8% and Israel last edition at 33.9%). This is the third edition won by male vocals in a row, after three wins by female vocals! Here’s the winning clip:

Behind this win, we had the closest contest ever, and it’s only a 1 point difference for the win, a 2 points difference for 3rd place and again a 1 point difference for 5th! This stirs huge controversies in the community, as people feel some HoD prefer voting for some songs not solely based on songs (euphemism). Whether this is true or not, we will never know unless people come out and openly say so. Of course, since we’re a community and we want peace, we’ll settle this later through talk and discussion. You have the right to rise suspicion and we will not pretend they’re not there like the EBU with Azerbaijan’s voting issues… For now, because this is the heat in the moment, nothing else will be decided but that, from now on, editions will go blind as people will NOT know who sent what anymore!

Spain comes second, the best result ever for the country who had never been in the Top 20 before! It’s also Matt’s best result after he was 5th with Germany before! The French pattern is now a thing to watch for, 1st twice in 2014, 2nd twice in 2015, 3rd twice in 2016! A big thanks to all those who voted for France! Spain recieved as many 12 as Denmark, as both got 5, but Spain got points from one country more. France got points from 22 countries, so more than half too! France’s 131 pts is a big record for 3rd, and would be second last month! But United-Kingdom did great as well, as it got 129pts, the highest ever for 4th! The Top 4 were predicted right only by one person, Donnie! No other songs made it pass 100pts but Finland (98 points), Germany (97 points) and Israel (94 points) made a great battle for 5th, as all three come within 4pts to one another. The lower Top 10 is completed by Bosnia & Herzegovina, a true ETSC darling, Belgium (only song in the Top 10 for Robert) and Estonia who gets its first Top 10 placing ever, for Pablo who joined last month and was last there! Congratulations to them all! The 8th-10th was correctly predicted, not in the right order, by Ren! Ren’s Sweden which was predicted 13th and came as a shocking last! The entire Top 8 HoD have already been in the Top 5 and out of them all only Matt D with Spain got his best result ever!

Coming up, results of prediction game! The real top 10 to guess was: Denmark, Spain, France, United-Kingdom, Finland, Germany, Israel, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Belgium and Estonia. The points are awarded if you got a country in the Top 10 right, and the closest you are to the real placing, the more points you get! The Top 4 in prediction was Top 4 even though in the exact reverse order! Anyway no big surprises out there this time! Greece and Norway are again the Top 2 countries predicted to do Top 10, like last edition, and failed (13th and 14th). Not many people predicted Estonia, Latvia and Algeria above them! So the results: Donnie wins it again, like ETSC 4 with a new record of 400pts! Then follow: David (372 pts), Anders and Dimitris tie (341 pts), Ren (331 pts), Dino (330 pts), Pablo (320 pts), Razvan (310 pts), Franco (301 pts), Gregor (299 pts), Tecku (283 pts), Elmar (276 pts), Guitar (267 pts), Rob (265 pts), Matt (260 pts), Oxi (257 pts), Bay (228 pts), Martin (213 pts), Arpatilaos (195 pts)!

As for “ETSC 7 – July 2017″, it will be officially held in Copenhagen’s Concert Hall. So we move North for the first time. The logo for it is inspired by the winner again, using bits of the Single’s cover: