Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
‘You Decide’ and the BBC’s Attitude to the Eurovision Song Contest
by Ewan Spence
Was ‘You Decide’ little more than a PR exercise in shifting the blame of a ‘poor song’ onto the British public? A way to ensure that Eurovision 2016 is a risk-free production that will not cause any political (or budgetary) headaches for the BBC? Or was it the start of a journey towards a selection process that the British music industry will be happy to be involved with over the next five to ten years?
It was all of those, and more. It managed to serve some areas well, while others were left in the ‘box of problems’ to hopefully be addressed in the future. The BBC has delivered more to Eurovision followers in 2016, but there are signs that dangerous old habits remain.
There’s Lots To Like
One thing that is not immediately obvious is the forward-looking nature of the show. Whatever happens to this year’s entry will have a direct bearing on next year’s entry. With the involvement of Hugh Goldsmith, the BBC has attracted support from the UK’s record industry. The industry has not completely turned its back on the BBC’s Eurovision efforts after ‘Still in Love With You‘, although at the moment all we can see is the lower reaches of the slush pile and some compositions with a handful of recognisable names from years gone by.
I suspect that the industry is looking to answer the question ‘Can we trust the BBC to take care of our own?’ After the results in the last few years, that’s not a question that can be answered confidently, and this is where I think ‘You Decide’ will have the biggest impact.
All of the songs were, to reach for an easy hashtag, respectable. There was no ancient legend taking one more swing to sell a Greatest Hits album, there were no tired clichés of decades gone by, and (perhaps most notably) there was no ‘novelty’ song (think ‘Flying the Flag‘, ‘Yodel In The Canyon Of Love‘, or the rejected submission from Tigertailz below). The artists who lost out lost out to a ‘proper’ song and all of them can hold their head high — an attitude which will be helped by the BBC’s long-standing policy to not release voting numbers from its talent shows.
The goal is to make the UK’s National Final a platform that artists and writers want to enter, that provides them a safe performance space, and does not unduly damage a career. Look over to National Finals such as UMK in Finland, A Dal in Hungary, and the behemoth of Sweden’s Melodifestivalen, and there is no shame in not winning these Contests… It’s exactly the opposite. The appearance is the benefit, and the win is a value added extra.
As we’ve written before on ESC Insight, it’s unlikely an artist at the peak of their financial power would consider the risk of Eurovision, but the BBC should be working to elevate the National Final from the ‘unsigned / losing Talent Show performer’ level to artists working on their second or third albums who are looking to break through to an international audience. In that sense ‘You Decide’ was a success… assuming that the BBC continues to respect the music and the careers of Joe and Jake in Stockholm and resists the temptation to chase short-term viewing figure boost with a click-bait style ‘we’re going to win Eurovision!!!!” marketing campaign focused purely on getting the audience to tune in.
The long term goal needs to be kept in mind, but I worry that the BBC has sacrificed too much in the short term, because ‘You Decide’ had a number of issues that harken back to darker days at the Contest.
Who Decides?
What were the UK public deciding on? Six songs selected by the BBC… Which I guess is an improvement on having one song selected by the BBC. Put aside the rhetoric around the welcome involvement of OGAE UK — the final OGAE song was actually the BBC picking its preferred song from a shortlist of six songs after OGAE had sifted through the public submissions. Any song that was potentially ‘off-message’ was not going to make it through the BBC’s final gate in the selection process.
How representative of the UK were the chosen six? If your musical Dewey reference scale reached from 1 to 100, ‘You Decide’ offered six songs between 66 and 67 on the genre line. No matter what was chosen by the voters, the BBC was going to have a safe, middle of the road, pleasant three minutes that had no potential to upset anyone. Compare the music on offer in ‘You Decide’ to that offered by the Finnish National Final the very next night. UMK offered banghra, R&B, interpretive dance, girrrrl rock, power ballad, and crowd pleasing pop.
Not one song offered by the BBC took a musical risk. That frustrates and disappoints me. Eurovision deserves better than “I’m scared to send anything” from a broadcaster.
Who’s Show Was It Anyway?
Huge chunks of the show were addressing not the fans, or the watching public, but the music industry and the media. It was to my delight that at no point was there any visual sighting of Nicole and Hugo in a funny VT of dances and outfits at the Song Contest. Instead Scott Mills presented a pre-recorded video clip that demonstrated the ‘modern’ approach to staging a song at Eurovision — for me that was the high point of the evening. Not only was it clear that the BBC team had recognised an issue ESC Insight has spent time disseminating, it presented it to the public in an accessible way.
Yet all this professionalism has to be put to the side when microphone levels are all over the shop and the echoing nature of the venue is audible in the broadcast. The BBC’s insistence that live music is all about showing the instruments on stage and the grandeur of the venue meant that the performances felt choppy and ragged on screen. With the vast majority of broadcasters working hard on creating the equivalent of ‘live music videos’, the BBC’s ‘look it’s live music!’ approach is dated and a disservice to the visual language viewers have come to expect. When you look at the intricate staging of songs in other National Finals (such as the mesmerising world of ‘Seis‘ in Estonia, or the reflections of the hidden truth in Finland’s ‘Good Enough‘) the BBC’s insistence of getting a mad drummer on stage and in every third shot might be a comedic line in a Eurovision drinking game, but it’s still an unwelcome trope.
Although host Mel Giedroyc managed to land some good comedy lines (with “I’m the bill payer you have my permission” to her daughters at home, and “this week’s Star Baker is…” standing out), I was uncomfortable with her overall approach. It still feels like laughing at the Contest, rather than enjoying the atmosphere with everyone else. In the current environment I doubt that the BBC would have allowed a male host approaching his fifties to lust after all the female singers on stage and objectify the star guest in the same way that Giedroyc did with the male performers. But it’s all a bit of fun, so that’s alright. Isn’t it?
Must Keep Improving
On balance, this has been one of the best efforts by the BBC in selecting a song for Europe for many years. It engaged with the Eurovision community, it was a relative success in the ratings (grabbing four times as many viewers for its timeslot as the average BBC 4 show), and the media coverage the following day focused on how “not shit” the production and the music had been… Which was the biggest win for me.
This step forward needs to be the start of a revolution if the UK’s attitude to the Song Contest is going to change. The decision to sacrifice any genre choices to present six identikit songs must pay dividends with the music industry and the BBC must allow a wider range of styles to be presented next year for ‘You Decide’ to mean anything. The attitudes around staging and presentation need to be updated into the 21st century. And the British Media needs to continue to accept that the days of ‘Boom-bang-a-bang’ schlager-schlock numbers belong in the last century.
Most of all this effort will all come to nothing if Joe and Jake are not given the opportunity to deliver a solid result in May. The PR team needs to remember that it’s not all about the UK viewing figures, there needs to be some promotion of the song to gather votes from abroad. The staging needs to be modern, fresh, and engaging. The presentation needs to reflect the modern nature of the Contest, not the same tired end-of-the-pier attitude that has dragged the UK down for the last twenty years.
The Eurovision Song Contest has evolved over sixty-one years. The BBC has taken the first tentative steps to catch up with that evolution, and it should be commended. Now it needs to prove it can keep taking steps and start to catch up with the rest of the continent’s broadcasters.
Originally published at escinsight.com on March 9, 2016.
