Category: Eurovision

The BBC’s delightfully decisive and subversive entry to Eurovision 2015

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I have many thoughts on the UK entry, and could talk a lot about it (I have a website�for that) but I’m going to boil it down to this. The BBC’s Guy Freeman realised what ‘Contest’ means. Only the result on the night matters. Not chart success, not YouTube views, not fan opinion or if it works down the Euroclub. It’s a Contest, and finding a way to score is the only mark that counts. Freeman (who heads the BBC’s delegation) could have played it safe, found a nice middle of the road song, dug up a manic pixie dream

Eurovision songs reach the Top 40, Radio One holds its nose and has to play them. Win!

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I’ve been quiet about my Eurovision activities on this blog over the last two or three weeks (on the assumption that you all know where to find me, or saw the Twitter action), but I want to highlight this little fact. Four Eurovision songs reached the Top 40 yesterday, and 12 tracks made the Top 100. The power of social media and the ability to instantly buy digital music online has once more been able to show that the music does have an impact. The old-school gatekeepers might not hand tracks like ‘Undo’ or ‘Calm After The Storm’ a physical

On reaching 250 Eurovision podcasts

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This week I published my 250th podcast on The Eurovision Song Contest. Given the show is a ‘weekly’ (with some notable exceptions during the year, such as the twice daily schedule in the few days before the Contest), 250 is as good a milestone as any to take note and remember where the podcast has taken me. The first audio tracks I recorded for Eurovision were from Moscow and the 2009 Contest – those downloads were three ‘alternative ‘commentary’ track so you could watch the show along with me. It was during the run up to Norway in 2010 that

Who were the winners of Eurovision 2013?

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Just because you finish first does not mean you were the actual winner… even at The Eurovision Song Contest: To decide who was this year’s biggest winner, you have to actually define what it means to ‘win Eurovision’. It’s not as simple as finishing in first place on the Saturday night. While ‘Only Teardrops‘ is going to stay in the Song Contest record books, after the National Final guest appearances with a playback tape, it’s unlikely we’ll hear again from Emmelie de Forest. While you can still hear ‘Euphoria‘ on the beaches of São Paulo, Denmark’s 2013 winner will be

Tonight’s the night I head into the history books of Eurovision commentary

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Starting at 6pm tonight in the UK (7pm Central Europe, and 8pm local time in Ukraine) is the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2013. For once I won’t be in the Press Centre, or directly in front of the stage. Tonight, I’ll be with Luke Fisher in the Commentary Booth for the European Broadcasting Union. The Eurovision Song Contests have had free and official streams for many years, but until now they have been the pictures and the stage audio only – the traditional commentators role has not been part of the EBU’s stream. That’s changed for this Song Contest. My good

Hello, I’m Ewan Spence, and I’ll be the United Kingdom’s Eurovision Commentator later this month

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This year’s Junior Eurovision Song Contest takes place at 6pm (UK time) November 30th at the National Place of Arts “Ukraina” in Kyiv, and for the first time since 2005 it will be broadcast in the UK. No Eurovision show airing in the UK would be complete without a commentary team, so I am very excited to tell you that I will be one of the UK’s Eurovision Commentators. Joining me will be Luke Fisher, who many of you will have heard on our Alternative Commentaries over the last few years. I guess we won’t be doing an alternative commentary this