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Malik Harris at the end of his performance with a message of peace and solidarity
Photo: MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP
"Oh, he's so nice," sighed Barbara Schöneberger at the beginning of the ESC evening on ARD.
He was referring to Malik Harris, the German participant in the final of the song contest, and in fact there were no bad words about the 24-year-old from Turin during the rehearsal days.
On the show, he sang his song "Rockstars," and yes, the set designed to replicate Harris' home studio looked deliberately small.
And yes: A song called »Rockstars« should rock a little more.
But in general Malik Harris' performance was solid and competent.
And yet in the end the result was again: Germany is last.
Just like in 2015 and 2016;
In 2017, 2019 and 2021 it was the penultimate place.
The myth of the "good midfield"
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ESC commentator Peter Urban: "The system is unfair"
Photo: Georg Wendt / dpa
The ARD commentator Peter Urban, used to grief as an ESC veteran and an experienced comforter at the microphone, had already suspected it in advance and referred to the competition's rating system in a newspaper interview: "Each country and each jury votes for 25 candidates, but only the top ten in each country get points.
The eleventh gets zero points.
You can land in good midfield 40 times and still have no points.
In this respect, this system is unfair, which we have been denouncing for a long time," said the NDR radio man of the "Rheinische Post".
So did Malik Harris become a victim of the rating system?
The European Broadcasting Union EBU published the detailed voting results on its Eurovision website on Sunday.
Germany did not get a single point from the juries, which were made up of five experts from the music business per country.
That means: None of the 39 other countries saw Malik Harris' performance among the top ten.
But Peter Urban's thesis of the many places in the good middle field can only be upheld to a limited extent: Yes, in Australia and Austria Germany came 11th in the jury ranking, in Croatia 12th, in North Macedonia 13th - and that puts you in the bottom half of the 25 finalists.
The other placings: three times 14th, four times 16th, four times 17th, three times 18th, four times 19th, five times 21st, two times 22nd, two times 23rd, two times 24th.
The other half of the points to be awarded result from the result of televoting by the television audience.
Here Malik Harris received his six points, which are in the final result of the Eurovision Song Contest: In Austria, Switzerland and Estonia, "Rockstars" received the ninth most calls and SMS.
But not many good midfield places fell out of the standings here either: Ukraine is 12th, Armenia 13th. The rest of the audience votes: twice 14th, four times 15th, twice 16th, three times 17th, three times 18th, 4x 19th, 6x 20th, 3x 21st, 1x 22nd
And if place 1 to 25 counted?
The German delegation can at least console itself with the fact that their contribution was almost never rated the worst, even if the final result says so according to the ESC arithmetic.
In the last places, however, individual votes make a big difference, and the penultimate, France, would have been placed ahead of Germany simply because of the seven jury points from Armenia.
But Breton act Alvan & Ahez was televoted by a total of six countries and among the top ten by three juries.
The 23rd in the overall ranking, the three sisters from Iceland, owe their 20 points mainly to individual strong ratings: the Portuguese jury voted them 5th place (6 points), the Ukrainian audience 3rd place (8 points).
If you now apply Peter Urban's proposed change to the rating system - »a system in which everyone from place 25 to first receives points would be fairer« - Germany would actually overtake France (1212) and Iceland (1282) with 1152 points in the addition.
France has quite a few jury placements in the 20s, and Iceland is often in last place in televoting.
And yet the ESC team at Norddeutscher Rundfunk is aware of the rules of the game for the Song Contest;
you know about the rating system and could draw the conclusion that "nice" is only enough for midfield and that you should be more conspicuous for better places.
Audience favorites and jury material
Just like the folk dance punk from the Republic of Moldova and the hand washer from Serbia did: After the jury votes in 20th and 11th place respectively, the two titles jumped to 7th and 5th overall thanks to the second and fourth best audience votes. Conversely, Australia slipped and Azerbaijan, after adding audience votes, still out of the top ten where they had seen the juries.
By far the biggest beneficiary of televoting was, of course, the Ukraine.
In 28 countries they got the 12 points of the TV viewers.
There were 10 points seven times (Serbia won four times, including three ex-Yugoslav countries, Romania chose Moldova, Albania chose Greece), two times 8 points (North Macedonia and Malta) and the 7 points from Serbia was the weakest result .
There they preferred happier fabrics from Moldova, Spain and Norway.
Who was prone to booty hypnotic?
In general, the mood in the various regions of Europe seemed to diverge noticeably: Southern European countries in particular warmed to the contribution from Spain, which was presented with a lot of butt-shaking: 12 points from the juries from Malta, North Macedonia, San Marino, Portugal and Armenia (but also from Ireland , Australia and Sweden);
the best televoting results from Greece, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Montenegro and Azerbaijan.
On the other hand, the juries from Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Finland gave Spain zero points (alongside Italy) – perhaps in view of the Russian threat is less susceptible to »booty hypnotic«?
Small oddities on the side: The only five countries where the overall second-placed song from Great Britain went empty-handed in the televoting were the Balkan states of North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Croatia.
And: The contribution from Romania, presented in Spanish refrain language and torero look, was actually well received in Spain: 10 points in the televote!
Less cheerful was the news from the EBU that irregularities in the jury vote in the second semi-final were said to have occurred in six countries.
For this reason, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino were not allowed to cast any jury votes in the final either – the countries' points were calculated “on the basis of the results of countries with a similar voting history”.
