Five seconds into the future – It’s Eurovision time!

As I write this blog post, I’m safely wrapped up in the Press Centre of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you keeping track of the dates, the live shows are on May 10th and 12th for the semi-finals, and Saturday 14th for the Grand Final. As is the norm for Eurovision, my experiences are a bit out of sync with the majority, but that actually helps the coverage I can do around the Contest.

The reason for "five seconds" is that my Eurovision experience is always challenging time. Last week I was at the Scottish "preview" Party for the Song Contest, which was the time where a big group of us all gather to watch Eurovision on TV – being three weeks before the broadcast we have to rely on the preview videos, but that’s my Eurovision on TV time.

During the dress rehearsals, I’m watching, taking notes, scripting and recording my commentary, so I’m watching the live show the day before the TV audience. And when they all settle in at home to watch the conference, the physics behind the transmission of the video signal from Dusseldorf getting to your TV screen means that my tweet-commentary can out-race the pictures.

You might have noticed that there’s been a lot less coverage of Eurovision on my personal blog – there’s a simple reason for that. Last year I ran my podcasts from the Eurovision category on this blog, but after the huge response and listenership, it seemed the right thing to do was spin off the podcast and Song Contest coverage to a separate site.

In essence, the site here was an incubator for what has become ESC Insight, which is not only the home of the podcast (direct RSS, iTunes and Zune links), but also a ‘long-form’ blog and website that focuses on in-depth articles around the Song Contest. If you’re looking for a daily chat show, articles and commentary from Dusseldorf this year, that’s where you want to go.

And before you ask, the annual commentary for the live shows will still be happening on Twitter via my own account @Ewan.

If you’re looking for a bit more Eurovision, I’m also working with SBS, the Australian broadcaster, to provide a range of Eurovision themed shows and daily news bulletins from Germany for their DAB broadcast – head over to the SBS Eurovision website, and catch the highlights in their podcast!