Bonnie Tyler's Eurovision entry is perfectly passable, though the fact it hasn't charted, despite being played regularly on Radio 2, is not a good sign.
It will, as per usual, have no chance in hell in winning when 90-odd million viewers across Europe settle down in front of their TVs to watch the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest from Malmö, Sweden, on Saturday night.
We will, again, blame it on tactical and territorial voting, but deep inside we know it's because the song just isn't good enough. So why can't the UK, one of only four net exporters of music in the world, do better than this? And shouldn't, or couldn't, the BBC do something about it?
While the vast majority of entrants will have fought hard in local competitions to represent their respective countries, the British entry has seemingly been chosen at random by an anonymous person at the BBC.
This issue was discussed by a panel of experts, including the former head of song contests for the European Broadcasting Union, Svante Stockselius, former BBC Eurovision producer Kevin Bishop, and Katrina (the last British Eurovision winner), at the Swedish Ambassador's residence in London this week.
Sweden, one of those four net exporters, experienced the same indifference to the competition for a period before, a little over a decade ago, some people at the country's public service broadcaster SVT realised what an opportunity was on offer.
Instead of having one audition programme with 10 contestants, in which the winner would be crowned, the producers picked 32 contestants to compete in semi-finals taking place all over the country, broadcast at prime time on Saturday nights. They reached out to record labels and professional songwriters, ensuring that two or three well-known artists would compete in each semi-final. As in the UK, music shows on TV were hard to come by, so the chance to appear on prime-time television was powerful enough to attract them.
The SVT public vote now represents half of the deciding vote, while the other half comes from a panel of "experts". "The cost was double what we spent on one night – and now we had six nights," explained Stockselius.
It was money well spent, as the audience quickly grew to an average of 4 million viewers. Considering that the total population of Sweden is 9.5 million, that's a stunning reach.
There is really no reason why this success can't be replicated in the UK. It remains one of BBC1's best-rating shows, with an average overnight audience of 7.5 million viewers in 2012,so there's clearly an interest.
The last time the BBC ran a local TV competition connected to Eurovision, in 2009, it entailed choosing the singer who would perform it. Jade Ewen was chosen to sing a song composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and American songwriter Diane Warren.
There's a certain irony in celebrating the excellence of British songwriting at the Ivor Novello awards two days before sending an artist that hasn't had a hit in 30 years to represent Britain in the biggest music television show in the world – singing a song that was co-written, yet again, by an American. As it's called the Eurovision song Contest, how come there hasn't been a contest to select the song for years?
Instead, according to Bishop, the song – and, since 2009, the artist – that represents the UK is chosen by an unknown BBC employee, a situation he blames on the corporation not being run by people who know anything about entertainment anymore. Bishop claims that, last year, Engelbert Humperdinck was chosen because it was believed he was big in eastern Europe. Well, that worked out well, didn't it? I guess Tyler was chosen because she's semi-big in Germany?
She's also got an album to promote. Yet I can think of a number of other British pop artists that also have an album to promote who would jump at the chance of an audience of 89 million. Stooche comes to mind, for example. Even if they were ambivalent about Eurovision, appearing on prime-time television and reaching almost half of the UK population during the try-outs would no doubt be tempting enough.
Yes, the Swedish broadcasting success of the local competitions would be the equivalent of almost 30 million viewers in the UK – six Saturday's in a row. Surely this would be an attractive proposition for any British TV channel. If the BBC can't rise to the challenge, maybe the stewardship of this incredible opportunity should be turned over to another broadcaster? How about ITV?
