SEMI FINAL DRAWS!!!!

Hopefully the next big piece of Eurovision news will be the running order of the two semi-finals.

I've had a go at setting my 'perfect' semi final draws. It's a much harder job than you think it is going to be ! I tried to take certain things into account and tried not to think about other factors...

1) ACT TYPES Have tried to keep similar acts types away from each other with at least 1 different act between e.g. not have two duets, groups, solo male or solo females in a row.

2) SONG TYPES Have also tried to keep the show fresh by not having 2 similar tempo or genre songs next to each other, especially if the act types are similar.

3) GEOGRAPHY Have tried not to think too much about geography when placing songs unless those countries has a song of similar genre, style or culture e.g. balkan ballad.

4) FAVOURITES Have also tried not to put my own favourite songs in positions that might favour them or on purposely treat songs I don't like unfairly.

5) OPENERS & CLOSERS Have attempted to choose the song in the first half that might be the most fitting opener and the song in the second half that would be a memorable closer. Although this might be seen as 'favouriting' I feel it is important to have songs that set a tone and create a bit of a full stop.

Semi 2 was much harder to place than semi 1 mainly because there were so many similar acts and genres, especially in the second half, that spacing them out in a fair and equal manner was quite tricky.

SEMI FINAL 1		SEMI FINAL 2
1st half	2nd half	1st half	2nd half
01) Netherlands 02) Armenia 03) Greece 04) Finland 05) Moldova 06) Estonia 07) FYR Macedonia 08) Belgium	09) Albania 10) Belarus 11) Russia 12) Serbia 13) Denmark 14) Hungary 15) Romania 16) Georgia	01) San Marino 02) Malta 03) Czech Republic 04) Portugal 05) Norway 06) Montenegro 07) Ireland      08) Lithuania	09) Cyprus 10) Switzerland 11) Latvia 12) Azerbaijan 13) Iceland 14) Israel 15) Slovenia 16) Poland 17) Sweden

It's not an exact science and there are so many ways of looking and interpreting the raw list before sorting them. It's also difficult not knowing what the ORF producers have in mind. They may well have their own agenda, priorities or judgements on what genres songs are in when it comes to the ordering.

Hopefully we should know the real running order very soon !

In the next blog post I will be starting counting up from 40 to my number 1 - so keep tuned on a daily basis so you can find ANOTHER reasons to disagree with me XD