It’s the Eurovision down season, and don’t you for a second think we’re going to stop speculating, arguing, and pushing our heated opinions. Our latest series looked at the national finals of Eurovision, and discussing how we would reform the national finals of Eurovision. This time we’re creating national finals from scratch; continuing with the United Kingdom.
In part two of this series Daniel, Kittens, and Euan discuss how they’d create a national final for The United Kingdom.
Do we think that they will return to a national final, and would we want that?
Daniel
Probably at some point, but certainly not any time soon. Even though we’re not getting Top 10 placements consistently, we’re doing a damn sight better than how we were faring under the mess that was You Decide, both in terms of results at the contest and the streaming numbers outside of it – coming second to last with Mae Muller was a much better result all things considered than Michael Rice coming last for instance. Perhaps after a large sustained period of doing relatively okay and rebuilding the public’s love for the contest we’ll give it another shot, and I’d welcome it then, but I think for now it would be too much too soon.
Kittens
Having recently rewatched You Decide for our retrospective podcast, I would guard heavily against any return to a national final at the moment. I think there is a possible return at some point, but the attitude of the British public is so set against Eurovision in general that I don’t see any way that there could be any useful version of voting with a public vote (and it’s the BBC, I don’t see any way to avoid a public vote). Firstly, they need to work on getting the reputation of Eurovision consistently up in the UK, and then they can attempt a national final again. It’s sad because I would love to see it happen, but only under good circumstances, and I don’t think we’re there yet. I also think budgets would be too restrictive to make a good show.
Euan
Echoing what Kittens has said in the above I think the appetite for a national final in the UK would be quite low at the minute because of current attitudes so the likelihood of one happening is rather low. Though I’d argue that I think it’d be a net positive to the UK to do one in the immediate future to help slowly restore faith in British participation, rather than waiting for another Sam Ryder moment and hoping for a great deal of enthusiasm. There were definitely issues with You Decide, but I’d much rather have a national final than deal with whatever the mess that has been our most recent participations.
What would our dream national final look like?
Daniel
One of the biggest issues I have with the UK music scene is that it is far far too centred on London. The winners of this year’s Mercury Prize, the award for the best UK album, was English Teacher, who I can’t say I’m overly familiar with. They were the first act from outside the capital to win the prize since 2014. Change is needed, so why not make our silly little contest a small part of that change.
It was recently revealed that BBC Introducing (The BBC’s platform to support up and coming, unsigned artists) are playing a part in the UK’s selection for their Eurovision 2025 artist. Build on this and utilise the 20 regional versions of BBC Introducing (which is a fantastic service that’s already endured cuts, there used to be 32!) to ensure that everyone gets a fair shot at fame whether they be from Carlisle, Camden, Cumbernauld or Caernarfon. Have each one send forward an artist and song. Now, 20 songs is already on the high end for a national final show, so I’d put these 20 into a few short almost EMA Freš-esque (without the duelling element) shows on somewhere like BBC3, hosted in the MediaCity studios, to get 5 or so of the brightest new things from around the nation to compete amongst some, presumably more established, artists invited at the national level. These others should be selected from a variety of genres, not just something you’d hear on Radio 1,
Any National Final needs a venue, and with that a bold take by me as my crusade against the capital continues. Host it in Blackpool. It may have a somewhat dingy reputation these days thanks in large part to package holidays and government neglect, but the seaside town was once famed for its variety entertainment, and what is Eurovision if not Europe’s greatest variety show. Besides, if it’s good enough for Strictly, it’s good enough for us.
I’d have the show itself be a one and done, giving time for build up and fun content in the weeks ahead. If you read literally any of the National Final reform articles I was on, you probably know how I’d like my NFs to go. 50/50 raw jury points and proportional televote. Have a jury for each constituent country of the UK and then a few more for whichever countries we want to be mates with on a given year.
Finally, any National Final needs a name, and whilst I’m not going to outwardly suggest one, I think any good UK show should have a name that doesn’t reference Eurovision at all. The You Decide brand is toxic because of *gestures wildly at the songs it produced* and anything named after Eurovision would likely reduce the audience to the people merely interested in the contest rather than a wider audience who want to hear some music.
Zero chance any of this comes to fruition, but you did ask for a dream.
Kittens
I think I would mostly support going the Sanremo route – music competition for the country, where Eurovision is an added optional extra. This would unfortunately need budget budget budget to really work, but just indulge me in my dreams. A single night semi final would be my preference, but with lots of supporting programming across multiple platforms to build the hype.
Selection-wise, we’re in a mess because established artists don’t need or want Eurovision and newer artists (normally) don’t have the level of experience needed to survive the relentless nature of the Eurovision pre-party to Eurovision circuit, which could mean a minimum of 6-8 weeks of constant pressure. In addition, artists desperately need to be someone both hardy as a performer and hardy as a person, because they’re going to receive a lot of flack. So there needs to be some level of preparedness for artist care – and artists should be made aware of the physical and mental toil they will be put through.
The BBC needs to stop worrying about radio friendly acceptability, but somehow still toe the line of public acceptability. So if anyone at the BBC is gonna be in charge of it, I’d consider giving selection over to one of the more specialist shows, or Radio 6, for example. There’s plenty of music-based programming on the BBC that is not exclusively saccharine pop, so I’d love to see them take a bit of a risk.
I’m not the kind of person who is going to turn around and just say ‘just send [genre]/[artist]’ because I don’t think that will work – the whole point is to get a good selection of solid songs with wide appeal, and then see what has the most appeal across the board (a la UMK). As much as I’d be tempted to scrap any televote due to my deep distrust of the UK public to pic a winner, I feel it would be improbable to do so, so maybe a 3 way split for televote/jury/international jury.
As much as I’d love to see a national tour for it, I suspect it would need to start small and we’d see something out of the BBC studios somewhere, which is…fine. I think small, baby steps would be the way to go – and if it gains momentum, to build on it slowly.
All this to say that I’d still prefer an internal selection – but with care and love, it could be done.
Euan
Essentially my ideas for a British NF would revolve around stripping Eurovision from the BBC. The world has moved beyond the need for the BBC. But since that’s not going to happen I feel the best outcome for a British national final would be go down the route that Ukraine did in 2016, and tender out the national final to Channel 4. Of the major British broadcasters it is by far the highest quality, and by that I mean the only one with any sense of a quality output. It is regrettable that their dedicated music channels were shuttered earlier this year, but there’s still the great talent within the company that I feel could create an amazingly high quality national final. I do also think this would satisfy Daniel’s need to for anti-Londonness as the channel has made a strong pivot to the North of England with their new focus on the Leeds area.
Something that I did think that the BBC has done well in the last decade is the introduction of fresh talent, and this is what I’d like to see in a new British national final. Either an internal selection with a direct focus for indie bands or groups, or an open call for little heard talent very early in the year. Then give that act the creative freedom to make five songs for a Eurovision selection on their own, or have a team of writers ready to assist. The most important part is that the act themselves get to decide the direction of how these songs are made.
For the actual selection itself I think that there should be a strong focus on the indieness of the act. And that’s a ridiculously roundabout way of saying that the selection should be held in the city of, or the nearest, of the act. Find a nice concert hall and let them belt our their authentic selves. Voting would be entirely using a televote. Channel 4 would have already done its due diligence that a jury would be unneeded.
The United Kingdom’s Eurovision Journey
The UK is one of the most successful countries in the Eurovision Song Contest. Debuting at the second edition of the Contest in 1957, the United Kingdom won the competition on five occasions. The most recent win for the UK was in 1997 with Katrina and the Waves, singing “Love Shine A Light”. The UK also holds the record for second-place finishes – currently at 16.
In 2024, Olly Alexander represented the UK in Malmö with his song “Dizzy”. At the close of voting, the UK finished 18th in a field of 25, earning 46 points. All these points came from the jury.
What do you think about our reforms? As always, let us know what you think by commenting down below. Also, be sure to follow ‘That Eurovision Site’ on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky for all the latest Eurovision news!
News Source: That Eurovision Site
Photo Credit: Sarah Louise Bennett / EBU
Tim J