Now that the Euphoria has died down, what’s next on Sofabet? When the EBU publish the jury/televoting split results for Eurovision 2012, you can expect some reflections from Daniel.
And do join us on Saturday for the final of BBC1’s The Voice, which pits the heavily-pimped Ruth Brown Leanne Mitchell against Jaz Ellington Tyler James, Vince Kidd and people’s champion Lady Catherine Anna Brudenell “Bo” Bruce. If you’ve missed our coverage of The Voice, catch up on Dug’s posts here.
After that, we’ll be counting the days to the X Factor during the frustrating summer lull. Or is there anything we should be covering? Do please use the comments to this post to let us know if there are other events you’d like to be able to discuss on Sofabet, and in general we’d love to hear any suggestions you might have for improving the site. Bearing in mind that neither Daniel, Dug nor I are technical whizzes, we’ll do our best to oblige.
X Factor auditions are taking place at the moment. Is anyone from sofabet going to be in attendance? I’m not but I have a friend who went to London today, so I’ve tried to ask him for information and names of anyone who was pimped by the judges. However, there are several days of London auditions (with different guest judges) so he won’t necessary have seen anything of standout quality.
Hi Tim, No plans but Dug is waiting on Cardiff tickets. Would love to get any intelligence on how things are shaping up.
Sorry, belated update from the X Factor auditions. It seems instruments are allowed on stage this year. A Canadian guy-with-guitar called Fraser got through and was very popular. Also a girl called Georgina got 4 standing ovations from the judges. My friend said to watch out for her.
More pictures of Ott Lepland.
One a day till the XF starts?
It’s the best idea we’ve got so far. I’ll contact his publicist.
Yes. This. I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER.
I’ll start things off with this clip of Ott doing Snoop Dogg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFL_rKD9dvM
Whilst I think it’s the worst thing in the world and would willingly set the housemates the task of defusing a briefcase nuke to earn an extra shopping budget… I nonetheless also think that Big Brother may have some cold-eyed money-making potential.
Hmm… I haven’t watched Big Brother since Nasty Nick was kicked out in season 1, so am not in a position to know what I’m talking about. We’d need a Sofabet Big Brother correspondent. Any suggestions/offers?
I personally have no clue… I didn’t even watch Nasty Nick in season 1. The general impression I have is that it’s a programme where producer intentions are very readable by a skilled watcher though.
I agree with Nick – it’s something that’s potentially lucrative as producer intentions and a narrative can be read out of it. I watched series 1, 2, 4 and bits of 6 in my sixth form/uni years but stopped following it afterwards due to moving to Germany, though I seem to remember very loosely keeping up with events in series 7/8 online. There must be someone here with more Big Brother knowledge than us?
It also requires more time investment than other shows, because isn’t it on for an hour every night these days or something ridiculous?
I’m not sure I could do it because I don’t think I can get Channel 5 online here (unlike BBC/ITV). Isn’t it much more of a tawdry niche affair now that Richard Desmond took it over after Channel 4 let go of it?
I’ve watched every series of Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. It does require an enormous time investment as you have the one hour show plus the Big Brother’s Bit On The Side show afterwards – which is more entertaining plus gives you the greatest insight into producer favouritism. I’m not sure I can commit to watching it every day but I will be dipping in and out – especially to Bit On The Side as I find it highly amusing and entertaining. I do fancy betting on the evictions this time, however. Is there much of a market on betfair for it, does anyone know?
Tim, turns out Dug is a fellow BB fan. We shall have coverage! 🙂
Ohhhh great news! Looks like the summer months for TV punters won’t be so fallow after all 😀
BB for me too.
It’s always been my most consistently profitable show.
I do worry about liquidity on betfair though.
Nice to hear that. Can you put in short (for us newbies) which profitable markets are there – eviction only or something more?
The evictions are best avoided these days.
The highstreet rarely price them up before nominations now and the liquidity on betafir is very poor.
There has been some cracking value pre noms over the years, but alas no more.
You’re now left with backing after noms and the switch to the vote to save and very low voting numbers has led to some very odd and far from predictable results.
I just stick to the outight market.
The key has always been to try and spot the 2 or 3 reasonably normal HM’s, in amongst the obnoxious narcissists.
The earlier you can do that and take a nice position on them the better.
Also laying the early favourites tends to be profitable.
Occasionally you have someone like Pete from BB7 who leads all the way, but it’s much more common for there to be 4, 5, 6 or more differnt favourites throughout the series.
Hey man, thanks for the info!
Hi Andrew / Daniel,
I thought you may find this interesting. Its two you tube clips form the final of American Idol The two final contestants each had to sing 3 songs with the final song being the winners single that was different for each contestant and was picked for them by the show. The reason for sending you this is for you to see the judges comments after Jessica Sanchez sang her song. It has to be the worst de-ramping of a contestant is talent show history ( they chose the song f. Jenifer Lopez’s comments particularly imply to the audience that she is not even going to get a chance to release the winners song (hense as you say no need for the public to vote). Compare that for the praise they gave the eventual winner Philip Philips for his winners song. Incidentally Jessica had sang her fist two songs really well which may be why the de ramp was necessary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BspOlnvyrM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OZmrJAjt_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Hi Shoulders, Interesting! It’s textbook, isn’t it? From all three judges, “you’re great, but wrong song, but you’re great” – minimises the risk of anyone voting because they want her to release the song, minimises the risk of anyone voting because they feel she’s been unfairly criticised.
Also amused by Steven Tyler’s slip of the tongue – “I know how great you can sing, and so can millions of others”. Obviously he meant so do millions of others, but the effect of the words that came out of his mouth was to imply “she’s good but nothing special”. It would be fun to think this was planned, but I suspect they’re not quite this Machiavellian.
I was just amazed that the show gave her a winners single to sing only for all 3 judges to basically say it was a rubbish song, I don’t think any of the X Factor judges have ever been that brutal at the final hurdle!!
http://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/eurovision-voting-2012-did-azerbaijan-cheat/
I have to say this is quite interesting as the idea manipulating the televote in small nations has crossed my mind several times before. It cant be that difficult to execute. Send a small team to Malta for a holiday – why shouldn’t they vote en masse for their favourite song while there?
Anyone fancy a trip to San Marino next May so we can land a betting coup?
Or, more seriously, should we be considering Malta as guaranteed voting ally of Azerbaijan now? It certainly wasn’t on my radar this year.
I saw this too, and I believe it.
There have been Malta bribery rumours (not specifically concerning Azerbaijan) flying around since the juries were reintroduced; I strongly suspect they’re true. The high points Azerbaijan received from Moldova and Bulgaria could have a perfectly reasonable explanation, but it’s perhaps more likely they’re due to corruption, especially in the case of Bulgaria which is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. (I’m pretty sure their national final has been a fix at least once in the past. And we all know that Belarus’s selection is generally a complete fiddle.) Despite these allegations, I’m pretty satisfied that most of Azerbaijan’s points were genuine – they had a good singer and song, have a lot of voting allies etc, and it’s just difficult to manipulate the results on a major scale.
Apropos San Marino, its results stink of bribery this year in my opinion. Before the contest, I heard from a usually very reliable source that the reason behind San Marino’s song choice was that the song’s “composer” (using the term loosely), Ralph Siegel (who’s a millionaire) offered to pay for the San Marino delegation to stay in Baku’s top hotel for 2 weeks if they chose his song. (I can’t verify whether or not this was the case.) The countries that gave San Marino high points in the semi strike me as highly suspicious: 4 points from Montenegro, who sent a Ralph Siegel song in 2009; 7 from Moldova, where Siegel had a song in the national final this year, and 5 and 10(!) from Azerbaijan and Albania respectively, which screams “bribery” at me. Despite that it still didn’t qualify, obviously because it’s balls.
Declan Lowney, who directed Eurovision 1988 in Dublin and later went on to produce the first 2 series of Father Ted, got in trouble at the time for telling the Irish Times in an interview that Eurovision was “just an excuse for a load of TV executives to go on the piss on expenses”. Based on what I observed last year, I think he’s absolutely right and it’s the same now.