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High viewing figures again
Finland: Eurovision 2008 in the Finnish media
Finland was living a real Eurovision mania last year but this year things have calmed down back to normal. Some hype was created after Tuesday’s semi final where Finland surprisingly qualified for the final. By Saturday the media was speculating the rumours Finland had won the first semi final just like Lordi. This was stated even in the YLE TV-news just before the final. An internet poll stated nearly 70% of Finns were still satisfied with the result.
The first semi final was watched by 800.000 people that is a very good figure. The figures for the final should be published tomorrow but one can guess they are around 1 million viewers, a little down from last year’s when the contest was in Finland.
Teräsbetoni’s goal was to make the final and they did. Between the semi final and the final while the betting odds were going up and the rumours spread maybe their hopes went up, too. Right after the final they were disappointed but once back in Finland they really understood what they had done: taken Finland to the final with a rock song in Finnish reaching their initial goal so everybody was happy and stating what a wonderful experience it was.
Jaana Pelkonen, last year’s host in Finland got a fair share of media attention, too, both in the Finnish papers and was constantly friendly teased by the TV co-commentator Peltsi Peltola for her fan superstar status in Belgrade with thousends of international fans.
The host city Belgrade also got a lot of publicity. Many papers and magazines presented Belgrade as a holiday destination with tips of things to do and places to visit so Eurovision also helped the touristic promotion of Serbia and Belgrade.
As usual a fight between Finland and Sweden was created when Sweden's Charlotte commented the Finnish song stating she can't understand how such a song makes the final, and Teräsbetoni answered her song is so clichée anyone could write it on his lunchbreak. Later on they apparently made up but Finns of course hoped to beat Sweden again for the third year in a row but thanks to Malta, we didn't!
Related polls
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best national final
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Worst dressed performer/s
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best dressed performer/s
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best duo/group performance
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best preview video
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best male vocal performance
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best male performance
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best female vocal performance
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best female performance
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Lyricist(s) of the year
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Composer(s) of the year
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Best act not to qualify from the semi finals
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Most traditional Europop song
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Song of the year
- 2008 esctoday.com award nominations: Performance of the year
- First quarter final in Bulgaria: your favourite?
- Jury vote, do you agree?
- Jury vote only in the final or in the semis as well?
- What mixture of televote and jury vote do you think is the best?
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Taken from the article Meline posted:
"TV commentators restrained themselves from uttering insulting comments of the like of which Lordi was greeted with two years ago, a sign that even people with stereotyped - not to say adverse - conceptions about Metal can learn to shut up when they have nothing useful to say.
I was hopping they would choose Cristal Snow.
Thanks Melina!
I adore Finnish rock and metal music 
And Malta Star, you rock!!! 
As others are posting articles, here's an interesting French one (and it's even on-topic, unlike the Armenia article below )
http://dna29.blogspo(...)at-off-to-finns.html
"I Take my Hat off to the Finns
To quote the guy from Metalreviews, "in the vast wasteland of pop music known as the Eurovision Song Contest" Finns are a welcomed singularity. After Lordi in 2006, this year it's the second time Finland has sent a Metal band in the contest, Teräsbetoni, a band playing a very straightforward Heavy Metal in the vein of Manowar but blessed with more of a second degré sense of humor than their American counterpart. Unlike Lordi, who managed to fetch the big prise, Teräsbetoni ("Reinforced concrete" in English" finished only 22nd out of 24. They had everything Lordi lacked, some truly chest exploding riffing enhanced by powerful melodic vocals and they lacked everything Lordi displayed, the mind blowing visuals.
On the overall there is little to be proud of as a Metalhead. After all, what is the point in participating in a musical wasteland contest in the first place and even if you do, what is the point of participating in a contest at all without going there to win, one might ask. Well, the point here is different and there is reason to be proud. The audacity of the Finns deserves big respect (be they the voting public or a selected voting committee). By sending a Metal band in an European music contest they proved they value their Metal artists and Finland - along with Germany, Norway and Sweden - is among the leading European countries in producing worthy Metal acts with worldwide impact on a regular basis (think Children of Bodom, Finntroll, Nightwish, Amorphis, Stratovarius and Apocalyptica just to name a few). Another big step is that - at least in France - upon seeing Teräsbetoni performing live, TV commentators restrained themselves from uttering insulting comments of the like of which Lordi was greeted with two years ago, a sign that even people with stereotyped - not to say adverse - conceptions about Metal can learn to shut up when they have nothing useful to say. Not a very dignifying general observation, but that's the world we live in ."
wow go finland... yeh ok suomi is a pretty hideous language (no offence lol) but damn go the heavy rock!!! biggest compliment to Suomi is my esc hater sis who exclaimed whilst watching Terasbetoni, "i whish this kinda rock was still alive"!!!
great try guys, something diff to the comp, n big ups for usuin ur own language
oh by the way even though Malta gave 12 points to Sweden, I voted about 20 times for Teräsbetoni but unfortunately they didn't get a point from my country 
FINLAND and TERÄSBETONI the BEST!
Don't be fooled, Belgrade needs a few more years before it will make a good holiday destination. And the population will need to learn how to smile first.
I found an interesting article at this website:
www.jonworth.eu/qel(...)-have-won-eurovision
PS: He`s not Armenian
so it says:
Qele victoire! Why Armenia should have won Eurovision
OK, there are 142.2 million people in Russia, Europe’s largest country voting in Eurovision. San Marino, the smallest, has a mere 20000. But when it comes to the votes allocated in Eurovision each county’s votes count equally. If you think the EU’s Qualified Majority Voting system for legislation is bad, try Eurovision’s system - it’s a terrible distortion in favour of the smaller countries. Plus as most of the (small) Balkan countries vote for each other, and Russian minorities in the small Baltic and Caucusus countries vote for Russia you get a skewed result.
So here’s the alternative: weight each country’s votes according to that country’s population. OK, this assumes that voting turnout in all countries is the same, but it’s inherently a fairer system. Taking the populations of European countries from Wikipedia, and the official Eurovision results table I have come up with this adjusted Excel table. The result: Armenia (Qele, Qele) wins with a population-adjusted 5935.1 points, ahead of Greece (4251.6 points) and Azerbaijan (3796.1 points). Russia, the actual winner, manages only 5th place in the population adjusted results. Sadly even with the adjusted results the UK is still rooted to the bottom in 25th place.
U can find the charts and stuff on his page and c how 2 came 2 this conclusion
Jonny K:
Yeah, it's great
- Stockholm calling
Its good isn't it!! It's nice to hear the Greek parts to the song aswell in the mix!
Finland sucked this year....I love HANNA last year she is a cool lady 
Finland ,this year, was good.....even perfect....unfortunately soviet countries
finalan versus sweden... this year my choice is finland, i didnt understan words of theoir song but charlotte's song wasnt my hero at all!
Jonny K:
wow ... I like that mix of Secret Combination
Thanks, Melina!
But I guess that's just how Eurovision works nowadays... Portugal got kicked down again but to me, Vania still is the best and the second place in the semi final showed her class!
At least I could see my dear Vania performing her magnificent song twice so I am happy about that, even though she was robbed of victory!
And about Teräsbetoni: seriously, I was so amazed by their vocals in the arena... I was like "OMG- Are they singing live?" Lordi had weaker vocals... very well done, Teräsbetoni!
FInland deserved more!
I agree with Melina... thank you all ! Kiitos ! 
Well, about Teräsbetoni.. I think it was a ok song and so on and cool that it was in Finnish. On the other hand, I hope that we´ll send something new next year.. no hard rock again although IT`S SOOOO FINNISH.
I agree with that stage thing.. unfortunately it looked quite same than Helsinki stage but Belgrade and Serbia did a good job! It was a nice ESC.
CONGRATULATIONS FINLAND, THANKS TO TERASBETONI FOR GOOD LIVE PERFORMANCE IN ESC 2008.
lol charlotte was mean to everyone and so jealous.
both finland and sweden failed by the way while denmark and norway were the dark horses.
I must say it's really heart-warming to read the positive comments here, even people who normally hate rock/metal to say Teräsbetoni was amazing (as they were)...! Thank you all!
@ Florian G, not sure you'll read this, but as I know you supported the Portuguese entry - we thought it was magnificent, too, and should have ended much higher, obviously...
@ Scott.. yes, it's sure strange...
@jonny k
yes the video is nice..never seen that before..my son likes it too..what goes around comes around
well now..off to the sauna..
- Scott T
The reason why is because not many people thought it was actually gonna win. It was the favourite in most fan polls that showed peoples favourites, but these weren't predictions to win. In the prediction polls Sweden did quite badly and it was won most of the time by Ukraine and Russia. Also most people predicted it would do a "kate ryan", and it would have done had the jury not saved them.
(well actually, regarding my last post, that clip i posted wasn't actually british, it was korean. Although it is kinda british because the BBC regularly show them! But it made me laugh! )
I'm shocked about Sweden too. Charlotte deserved more!
She was better than Spain & Latvia! My god. Can't believe those 2 ended up so high! Yaaaak!
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