A Couple Of Surprising Results

While the press gather to fire up live streams and blogs I shall take a couple of moments to discuss the semi-final results. So here is a couple of small points on the contest.

The Qualifiers
Just in case you've forgotten the qualifiers were (In Random Order):

1. Lithuania

2. Bosnia & Herzegovina 

3. Serbia

4. Ukraine

5. Sweden

6. FYR Macedonia

7. Norway

8. Estonia

9. Malta

10. Turkey

The main surprises were the qualification of Lithuania, B+H, Malta and to a lesser extent FYR Macedonia. The biggest losers were Slovenia and Portugal in my opinion. While the names are surprising about 15 songs were in the mix to qualify, no one shocking came out though. My predictions were a bit out - I only got 7/10. 

The Interval Act
I thought that the interval act definitely one of the best we've seen until Ell & Nikki proved that even they thought that their winning song was boring so just sung Waterloo [a bit out of tune] just to confuse people. It was pure car crash television.

Presenters
Presenters were as good as they were in Semi-Final 1. Which was pretty poor.

The Finalists
Finalists are from all over Europe but they break down as follows. 3 Balkans, 2 Baltic, 2 Scandinavia, Turkey, Malta and Ukraine. Which is pretty diverse. The importance of the running order was clearly shown.  Despite predictions of the 3-5 from the first half and 5-7 from the second half being broken it wasn't and the break down was four from the first half and six from the second.


The Draw will take place in the press conference which is currently ongoing.

The Draw 
The positions drawn is as follows:

Lithuania - #4

B+H - #5

Serbia - #24

Ukraine - #25
Sweden - #17
Macedonia - #22
Norway - #12
Estonia - #11
Malta - #21
Turkey - #18

This is a very interesting draw. I'll be writing about this in more detail over the next couple of hours and days but by this time Saturday.