Our second Eurovision semi-final picks are in; will we do better than the first semi-final?
Hoo boy, so we kinda tanked in our picks for the first Eurovision Song Contest semi-final, only getting 7 out of 10 right collectively (and not doing much better individually). Regardless, we here at telESCope shall persevere as we try our hand at predicting which of the 19((Sorry, Romania.)) 18 acts will advance from Thursday's second semi-final.
But first, let’s rehash Ryan's methodology summary. Ben, Ryan, and I ranked the entries three times. The first ranking was just to get a sense of what we liked and what we didn’t once all the entries were selected, and this ranking did not factor into our final scores. It did help us gauge improvement and/or disappointment over time. For our second ranking in mid-April, we each compared each individual entry against the others in the field asking the question “which entry is more likely to qualify.” We used this same ranking process for our third ranking after watching all of last week's rehearsal footage on the Eurovision YouTube channel.
For balance and to incorporate some on-the-ground perspective, we also used the press center votes,((Posted by escXtra and others)) the YouTube views of the official music videos, and the betting odds from Oddschecker.com. A few maths later, and we had our picks! Without further ado, here in alphabetical order are the ten countries we predict will advance from the first semi-final:
As an example of how weird our methodology can be, 13 of today's 18 competitors made it into one or more of our personal Top 10 lists. Norway is arguably our biggest gamble, as it has ridden the bubble on all of our metrics throughout this process. Also, with many surprises coming out of the first semi-final, there could be huge (but satisfying) upsets in the offing.
The second semi-final takes place today at at 2100 CET / 3:00pm EDT / 12:00pm PDT, and can be streamed live via the Eurovision.tv website. Good luck to all the contestants!