Carlo Romeo, Director General of the Sammarinese national broadcaster, SMRTV, has spoken out following the introduction of a new voting system to be used in the upcoming and future editions of the Eurovision Song Contest, stating; EBU, new rules but old behaviour. This is unacceptable.
Last week, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) announced the biggest change to the Eurovision voting procedure since 1975 in which, in short, a split in the presentation of the results into a separate jury vote and televote will be introduced.
San Marino, who is unable to gather a televoting result for the competition due to both not being able to reach the minimum televotes quota as well as using the same telephone system as Italy, uses a 100% jury vote in order to submit the country’s votes for the contest.
Under the new voting procedure, countries which are unable to deliver a valid televoting result will instead be replaced by, according to the EBU, a substitute result which is calculated by the audience result of a pre-selected group of countries. These groups and their composition have been pre-approved by the EBU and the Reference Group.
In a press statement released by SMRTV, Carlo Romeo stated:
Small States are, once again, discriminated. Not only, now the discrimination is even formalized. This is barely tolerable and the San Marino national Radio and Television is unsure whether it can tolerate it next year too. It is unbearable that certain decisions are simply communicated and not shared with the involved broadcasters.
Carlo went on to express his dismay at the micro-nation now only being able to have a 50% say in the final votes in the contest, with the remaining 50% of the Sammarinese vote being decided by viewers in other unspecified countries, hinting at a possible withdrawal from future editions of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The EBU has yet to comment on the Sammarinese press release.
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