At 21:16 +0200 26.1.2002, Bart Ingles wrote: >> I'm not sure if this is very interesting. This year's Eurovision Song >> Contest is approaching ... >For clarification, are there exactly 11 or 12 nominees? Or is there a >much larger pool of candidates, from which each country is free to >select its top 11 choices?
There are 33 countries in the European Broadcasting Union. Nowadays only 24 take part in the song contest each year. The countries with the least votes cannot participate the following year. Here's a news item about the present rules, with a link to the official rules in PDF on the EBU site. http://www.eurosong.org.uk/news/stories/rul02.htm The link takes to this file. http://www.ebu.ch/tv-cec_2002_rules.pdf In case of ties, the participant who has obtained the highest number of 12 point scores is the winner. If it's still a tie, the number of tens will decide, etc. Each country votes by telephone during a period of five minutes, or it can be 50% televote and 50% jury. The jurors vote immediately after the song has been sung by giving each song from 1 to 10 points under the watchful eye of a notary. The jury will be a backup in case the televote doesn't work. The results are faxed to the EBU scrutineer before they are read on air. Olli Salmi