Lee Smithurst, Head of Show of Eurovision 2023, has defended the decision to try out a new Semi Final qualifier announcement system at this year’s contest. 

During Eurovision fortnight in May it was revealed that during each Semi Final all the competing acts would stand on the stage together, with the hosts revealing each qualifier one by one. 

Historically at the contest the qualifiers from each Semi Final would learn of their fate while sitting with their delegations in the green room. 

The new format was scrapped after just one trial run during the first dress rehearsal for the first Semi Final, just hours before the evening preview show with an audience.  

Smithurst spoke exclusively to The Euro Trip and gave a multi-pronged defence of the trialled format. 

“The first reason was let’s try and put it on stage because we can get a clean shot of every single artist… so you can cut to them at any time, rather than in a green room where you have steady cameras just running to the person. 

“Because Eurovision isn’t like a Strictly or The X Factor where you get to know the contestants over time, you never really feel like you get to know the other contestants too much outside of their performance.

“We built in a little chat with Alesha [Dixon] backstage. The artists would go to an area and Alesha would chat to the first five and then the next five that qualified, which we thought was a nice way of finding out about them.” 

One of the most poignant reasons to try a new format was focussed on the wellbeing of the artists that don’t qualify. 

“When the artists don’t qualify naturally they’re upset, and the younger ones can be really visibly upset or in tears. It’s always apparent that you just want to get them out because they’re being filmed by the audience. 

“We thought by putting them on the stage, once the qualifiers are through, you can strike the five or six non qualifiers immediately. So they’re immediately backstage and they’re with their delegation and they can be away from prying eyes. If they do get upset, that’s a private moment for them.

In his defence, Smithurst also questioned why TV producers would want cameras pointing away from the Eurovision stage which they had “spent a lot of money on”. 

EBU involvement

In Liverpool, The Euro Trip spoke exclusively to Eurovision’s Executive Supervisor, Martin Österdahl, who said the EBU “want to tweak 10% [of the show] every year”. 

Smithurst confirmed this, saying: “When we first started this process, we’d spoken to EBU and the reference group about – like they do every year – things that could be tweaked in the show. 

“Is there anything that we can finesse? Is there any way we can get time out? We looked at all those different areas that they’d asked us to look at.” 

Despite leading on wanting to try something different, Smithurst was the first to admit that the new format didn’t work when it was initially trialled. 

“We just saw it on camera on the Monday and it didn’t work for various different reasons,” he said. 

“I think we did miss the artists being with their delegation in the green room. But also it wasn’t as quick as we thought it would be. It felt quite laborious. 

“I think pretty much after we’d done two or three qualifiers, we were talking to the gallery and we were all on the same page.”

Smithurst went on to say the sequence “lost some of its magic” which the team in the gallery agreed with, so the decision was taken straight after the dress rehearsal to revert back to the tried and tested format.

You can listen to The Euro Trip’s full and exclusive interview with Lee Smithurst and Eurovision 2023 Lead Creative Director Dan Shipton on Acast, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.