Norway’s Head of Delegation, Stig Karlsen, has denied speculation he has successfully lobbied the EBU to change the current 50/50 Eurovision voting method.
Karlsen is an advocate for reducing the voting power of juries in the Eurovision Song Contest and giving more power to the public.
However, speaking exclusively to The Euro Trip as a guest on The Contest & Me series of episodes, Karlsen rejected speculation that he had convinced the Eurovision Reference Group to make a change.
“I totally like the concept of having a jury and the public because it makes for much more exciting voting,” Karlsen said.
“It makes sense in terms of making sure that there is someone who is caring about the musical craft.
“The problem now is the gap between the public votes and the jury votes is so big and it happens again and again.
“If the people are going to feel strongly about the competition and believe in the competition, we should look at the 50/50 thing.
“Maybe it should be 60/40 and make a statement that the public votes are more important than the jury votes. It’s not a drastic change but I think that would be a good thing.
Since Karlsen took over as Head of Delegation in 2016, Norway has fared better with the televoters than the juries.
In the six Grand Finals Norway has reached under Karlsen’s reign, the country has received 332 points from the juries with an average ranking of 16th. In comparison, it has received 826 points from televoters with an average ranking of 8.3.
Karlsen was a guest at the recent Eurovision Song Contest Workshop in Berlin, Germany, and discussed his proposal with his contemporaries from across Europe.
Afterwards, he posted a photo on Instagram of a beer and a schnitzel with the caption “Mission accomplished”.
Asked directly by The Euro Trip if this was in reference to him having successfully changed the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest, Karlsen said: “It was just a success of getting a schnitzel.”
Karlsen conceded that if the current weighting of the voting model stays at 50% for the public and 50% for the juries, he would accept it.
“I’m sure the EBU and the host broadcaster will evaluate this and do all the right things.
“I have total confidence in them and if they end up doing 50/50, they probably have good reasons for doing that.
“But I would give it some time and give it some work and see if it was about time to change it a bit.”
Featured image – ESC Norge
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