Eurovision 2014 – This summer we resumed the “Eurovision Times Awards”, based on Oscars, to give prizes (Fridas) for the best in every category! ET regular members made recommendations and open polls were open for a full week and winners were announced. Discover the full results now!
2014 will be the second year for Eurovision Times to organize a new contest (you can check 2013′s results here). As with last year, our blog hosts now two contests: TEKO which takes place before the contest and the “Eurovision Times Awards” after the contest. The principle is simple, in each categories, the staff of this website will nominate a few entries per categories and open polls for the public to vote in them so we can reveal afterwards all the winners. The winners recieve an imaginary trophee, entitled the Fridas in hommage to Frida Boccara (French Eurovision winner in 1969).
In the past three weeks, the blog has played the game, recommendations, nominations, votes and winners. Now that all polls are closed and winners were announced, it does not harm to reveal the full results. We will also offer an analysis which you will be able to freely comment and disagree with.
Technical Awards
- Best Lyrics
- 131 Netherlands (43,5%)
- 66 Austria (21,9%)
- 48 Norway (15,9%)
- 41 Azerbaijan (13,6%)
- 15 Finland (5%)
- Best Composition
- 157 Netherlands (52,5%)
- 50 Armenia (16,7%)
- 40 Hungary (13,44%)
- 38 Azerbaijan (12,7%)
- 14 Finland (4,7%)
- Best Female vocals
- 111 Netherlands (32,8%)
- 104 Sweden (30,8%)
- 62 Austria (18,3%)
- 52 Albania (15,4%)
- 9 Georgia (2,7%)
- Best Male vocals
- 84 Montenegro (31,1%)
- 61 Netherlands (22,6%)
- 60 Norway (22,2%)
- 41 Malta (15,2%)
- 24 Finland (8,9%)
Artistic Awards
- Best Perfomance
- 141 Austria (44,3%)
- 112 Netherlands (35,2%)
- 34 Hungary (10,7%)
- 19 Armenia (6%)
- 12 Finland (3,8%)
- Best Props
- 78 Ukraine (29%)
- 74 Poland (27,5%)
- 45 Austria (16,7%)
- 39 Switzerland (14,5%)
- 33 Greece (12,3%)
- Best Female looks
- 101 Austria (43,9%)
- 45 Sweden (27,4%)
- 41 Netherlands (17,8%)
- 30 Azerbaijan (13%)
- 13 Germany (5,7%)
- Best Male looks
- 67 Finland (34,9%)
- 52 Switzerland (27,1%)
- 33 Hungary (17,2%)
- 27 Greece (14,1%)
- 13 Armenia (6,8%)
- Best Backings
- 1200 Slovenia (84,6%)
- 109 United-Kingdom (7,7%)
- 45 Ukraine (3,2%)
- 34 Denmark (2,4%)
- 31 Belarus (2,2%)
Delegation Awards
- Best Backdrop
- 85 Switzerland (42,3%)
- 44 Slovenia (21,9%)
- 32 Finland (15,9%)
- 26 Iceland (12,9%)
- 14 Denmark (7%)
- Best Promotion video
- 67 Montenegro (36,8%)
- 57 Netherlands (31,3%)
- 32 Armenia (17,6%)
- 18 Norway (9,9%)
- 8 Germany (4,4%)
- Best Spokeperson
- 104 Austria (51,2%)
- 32 Norway (15,8%)
- 27 Israel (13,3%)
- 21 France (10,3%)
- 19 Latvia (9,4%)
- Best National final
- 35 Finland (25,7%)
- 31 Hungary (22,8%)
- 28 Norway (20,6%)
- 26 Germany (19,1%)
- 16 Estonia (11,8%)
- Best Internal choice
- 77 Netherlands (40,5%)
- 53 Austria (27,9%)
- 30 Poland (15,8%)
- 17 Armenia (9%)
- 13 Italy (6,8%)
Result Awards
- Most Overrated entry
- 82 Russia (35,8%)
- 74 Romania (32,3%)
- 31 Ukraine (13,5%)
- 28 Denmark (12,2%)
- 14 San Marino (6,1%)
- Most Underrated entry
- 140 Israel (60,6%)
- 33 Germany (14,3%)
- 25 Azerbaijan (10,8%)
- 23 Albania (10%)
- 10 Georgia (4,3%)
- Best Song in the top 5
- 92 Netherlands (42,6%)
- 51 Sweden (23,6%)
- 39 Austria (18,1%)
- 21 Hungary (9,7%)
- 13 Armenia (6%)
- Best Song
- 79 Netherlands (35%)
- 46 Sweden (20,4%)
- 38 Austria (16,8%)
- 18 Hungary (8%)
- 13 Finland (5,8%)
- 11 Armenia (4,9%)
- 11 Norway (4,9%)
- 10 Azerbaijan (4,4%)
So now we can discuss a bit these results. Raw stats and comparison to last year: 37 entries (39 last year), 30 of them (29 last year) got at least 1 nomination for 18 awards. They were handed however to only 9 countries (10 last year) with 4 of them (5 last year) getting more than one Frida: 6 Netherlands, 3 Austria, 2 Finland, 2 Montenegro, 1 Israel, 1 Slovenia, 1 Switzerland, 1 Russia, 1 Ukraine.
Winners: obviously Netherlands and Austria appear as the biggest winners of Fridas 2014. However, there’s also Montenegro and in general OGAE‘s influence in the silent majority. Netherlands won 6 out of 10 possible award (out of 18 in general in offer this year). They lost 2 to Austria and 2 to Montenegro (helping Montenegro get a clean sweep 2 out of 2) and in their 4 losses, they got three times second and only once third. Very similar results from last year, except with 2 more overall, including “Best Entry” making it the most popular, without a doubt, in ET. Austria won 3 awards, two for Conchita (“Female Style” and “Best Performance”) and her personality, definitely, and one for the delegation “Best Spokeperson”, which reflects on Conchita herself (with the beard) and her win (which was emphasized in Austria’s voting). Also, Austria did very well in all other awards, never getting 4th or 5th so one can say it’s clearly very popular. Montenegro got two awards where Netherlands failed short, in “Best Male vocals” and “Best Promotion video”, both of which saw two of the weakest winners overall (less than 37% each time). Behind these wins, there’s also the question of OGAE’s huge influence. Sweden did not win any Fridas (just like last year) and barely should have been nominated to any if we only went by recommendations. However, as a huge OGAE winner and after all 3rd in Eurovision, each of its nominations lead to a very high result in the end: only 7 votes short to beating the Netherlands in “Best Female vocals” and second to Netherlands in both “Best Top 5 entry” and “Best Entry” where it beat every other big ET regular members’ favorites (Finland, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Norway, Hungary). Only Austria managed to do well there, but Austria is the Eurovision winner, popular throughout the web and also on ET. In the end, last year Netherlands was more of a “niche” entry which meant that it fell short in “Best Song” when this year, Netherlands smashed the competition for being both popular in ET and with all other fans, including non-esc fans as seen in the charts. Another example of the OGAE’s influence is Israel smashing the “Most Underrated” when many regular members in comments thought it clearly did not deserve to qualify. Among the other winners, Ukraine did again very well with the little nominations they got and they prove to be the prop masters, when Slovenia and Switzerland managed to get one Frida and one second place out of 2 and 3 nominations respectively. Poland, who often splits lovers and haters, did extremely well in the very little nominations they had, even witout a Frida to show for it.
Losers: of all ET favorites, Armenia, Hungary and Norway will appear as losers with no frida even if they had plenty nomations and are clearly ET regular members’ favorites. Same for Azerbaijan but with a bit less nominations. Armenia didn’t do well at all (last in Best Top 5 entry) in general but came second for its modern composition, Hungary also often did poorly but moved to third for the performance. Almost every “small” nominee (where I pushed someone through besides recommendations) did awful and got last: Georgia (Female vocals, Most Underrated), Germany (Female Style, Prmotion video), Italy (Internal choice)… Finland is a more complicated case: it often got last in each of its nomination but still is a winner with two Fridas in the end (out of 8 nominations): the two in which they were first of recommendations anyway, for Male style and National final, but in both cases they’re also some of the weakest winners (less than 35% each time) and they had big competition in these categories. They’re both winners and losers of Fridas 2014 and an interesting case of people rather disliking the song (very small results in composition, lyrics, performance) but still approving of the Finnish approach in general (style and national final). Russia with most overrated pays its unpopularity because of being the “mother land” of biased votings, as the center of all Eastern European blocks (Ex-soviet, Caucasus, and Pan-slavic) but also with the attitude towards the gay minorities emphasized through Conchita’s win: it clearly got esc fans against them. Romania got twice in a row runner-up in “Most Overrated” so watch out next year!
Voting: In general, “National final” was exciting with 4 nominees capable of winning in the end and it’s interesting to see Germany, winner last year, fall to 4th and Estonia, runner-up last year, fall to 5th when Finland and Hungary 4th and 5th last year, get 1st and 2nd this year! “Best Props” with 4 votes difference and “Best Female vocals” with 7 votes were head-to-head all through the voting and were exciting to follow from my point of view. Also, an interesting aspect people can’t see there is how Netherlands usually got a slow start and then after three or four days, built momentum towards their Fridas. I reckon that the ET regular members are way more divided (Armenia, Finland, Azerbaijan, Hungary and Norway) and they tend to have voted for Netherlands when their personal favorite was not nominated in this or that category (say for instance, Norway was missing for “Best Composition” and in general, Netherlands was almost the only one nominated in all of them, so it’s easier to scoop more wins in the end). Whereas, after a few days, Netherlands being an actual favorite ended up building momentum. One last word on the anomaly of “Best Backings”: it’s sad that Slovenians showed up all to vote for Slovenia as rules for ET Awards clearly state that one should not vote for his or her country unless he or she really think it’s the best in the category. Moreover, it really came from one day to the other, one day it was normal, the other day it moved to 1,170 votes or something, with Slovenia picking a few last ones after that. I did want to disqualify it, but Slovenia was in the lead before that, just a bit over the Uk. In the end, would have Slovenia beat Uk or not, we’ll never know, but it felt unfair to those who did vote for Slovenia before the voting insanity to prevent them from their winner. We want Fridas to be popular but not get insane results like those.
Another interesting element is that we got around the same number of votes than last year, just a tad more with an average a bit higher of 50 votes in general, with a small decline the second week of voting (for the last categories) just like last year. Sure the delegation awards are more difficult to vote for (you need to rewatch the voting, you must have seen the different national finals) but it’s still relevant: should we try to do Fridas in less time to get more people to vote?
Did you enjoy these three weeks of Frida? We’ll now have to figure out something for the summer and the idea of a fake-Eurovision hosted by us with songs chosen by regular members is growing strong, and last year’s Douze Points contest can make a come-back. Don’t forget that as soon as September hits, we often get the first big rumors, the first names and we’ll get more and more info inside Vienna (?) 2015 and the season will start definitely. If you have any recommendations on making ET Awards better, for 2015, they’ll be highly appreciated and taken into careful consideration. Hope it was fun and you’re not too mad about some of these results!
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