Publisher's Synopsis
Published annually since 2008 "The Complete & Independent Guide to the Eurovision Song Contest" contains every statistic imaginable! The fully revised second edition for 2012 has 276 pages of historical records and analysis of voting, divided into three parts: Section 1: Qualification for Eurovision for the current year. We look at each country's qualification process, whether by internal selection or by nation competition. Where a national broadcaster has held a competition to select their artist and song, we give details of how the competition was organised, the points or voting percentages given to the top 3 and a brief profile of the winning performer. Section 2: Contest Details and Voting Record. A full record of every Contest since 1956. For each year we list the artists, the songwriters & composers. Then the points awarded by each country to each performer in table format. We include the semi-final details for each year since they were introduced. A complete record of every point awarded. Next in this section we have a round-by-round record of the scoreboard to show how each country moved up and down the leaderboard as the points are announced. Finally in this section the book lists every country's Eurovision entry in country alphabetical order so you can look up any artist and see their performance in semi-finals and final. Section 3: Here's where the data really gets crunched. As well as the simple records such as most successful & least successful countries, whether internally selected artists do better than those who qualify through national competitions, winning margins, how well (and more commonly, how badly) the Big 5 perform, languages songs have been performed in and which type of act generally does best, we do a deep dive into complex statistical analysis & include data on average points received for each position in the running order since 1975, the closest & most one-sided voting relationships, how points awarded by juries differ from those given by the public, geographical and bloc voting and finally every country's voting record in every Contest. If you're curious about whether some countries always favour others, this is the section for you!
