UK Reveals Names Of Its Jury
| 17:42 UK time, Saturday, 14 May 2011
As you probably know, for the last 3 years the Eurovision Song Contest has moved away from a system where each country's final vote was made up entirely of a country's public phoning in. In order to help stop the problem of so-called 'political voting', each of the 43 countries now hires a JURY of five professionals within the music industry.
The names of each country's Jurors are kept secret until AFTER the votes have been submitted to the show's organisers, just so there can never be any accusation of countries secretly 'having little words' with jury members and getting them to vote a different way.
The scores that these juries award to the songs now count for 50% of the total vote of each nation - the other 50% is via televoting from the public. You can read more about how the voting system in Eurovision works here
The juries have in fact ALREADY voted - they cast their votes based on Friday night's second dress rehearsal.
So who's on the UK jury - the people who will have 50% of the say in how the UK awards its votes tonight? They are:
David Arnold (Film Composer) CHAIRMAN Paul Edwards (Music/Entertainment Lawyer) Niamh Perry (Singer) Celeste Richardson (Singer) Kevin Hughes (DJ/Music Journalist)
