News - esctoday.com awards - more results | Eurovision Song Contest News - 2009 Moscow, Russia 

The esctoday.com team announced the full results in the first three categories of the 1st annual esctoday.com awards last week; all of the winners were announced on Christmas Eve. The full results for the categories "Video of the year", "Eurovision Song Contest artist of the year (male, female, band)" and "Commentator of the year" are now available.

Video of the year award

Fan favorite Anna Vissi enters the esctoday.com awards poll for the first time with the category for Video award of the year.  The Cypriot diva who sang for Greece was wildly popular in the host country (some fans even took to calling the contest Euro.Vissi.on), and she was a favorite to win the contest.  However, she placed a mere ninth in the Song Contest final result achieving only 128 points of a possible 444 points.  The members of esctoday.com who were able to vote on the award nominations continue to support Anna Vissi passionately in the site's reactions section.  While she was not nominated in the Song, Performance or Composer of the year categories, members of the site jumped on the chance to honour their diva. She handily won the video category with 38 percent of the vote.

The full results:

• Winner - Anna Vissi/Everything (Greece)
• 1st runner-up - Lordi/Hard rock hallelujah (Finland)
• 2nd runner-up - Sibel Tüzün/Super star (Turkey)
• 3rd runner-up - Mariana Popova/Let me cry (Bulgaria)
• 4th runner-up - Los Ketchup/Bloody Mary (Spain)

Lordi's horror movie inspired video (complete with high-school cheerleaders) ranked second place with esctoday.com members and trailed behind Anna Vissi's dramatically performed ballad with only 32 percent of the vote.  Sibel Tüzün's third-ranked video received less than half of the votes that the Everything video received (17 percent of the total).  The videos from Bulgaria and Spain trailed far behind with 7.6 and 5.5 percent of the member's votes respectively.


Male artist of the year

High energy Dima Bilan topped the esctoday.com awards poll for male artist followed closely by the singer whose song captured the esctoday.com Song of the year.  The full results:

• Winner - Dima Bilan/Never let you go (Russia)
• 1st runner-up - Mihai Traistariu/Tornero (Romania)
• 2nd runner-up - Hari Mata Hari/Lejla (Bosnia & Herzogovina)
• 3rd runner-up - Anžej Dežan/Mr. Nobody (Slovenia)
• 4th runner-up - Brian Kennedy/Every song is a cry for love (Ireland)

Dima Bilan secured his win with 32 percent of the members' votes, while Mihai Traistariu commanded 30 percent of the vote.  Hari Mata Hari managed a little more than half of the votes that Bilan claimed (18 percent of the total).  This is a small reshuffle.  While the  package of song, performer and performance earned Dima Bilan a second place finish in the Song Contest final he was followed immediately by Hari Mata Hari in third place and Mihai Traistariu in fourth. 

Anžej Dežan and Brian Kennedy couldn't come close to the top performers in this category.  The esctoday.com readers awarded them with only 13 and 9 percent of the votes respectively.


Female artist of the year

Tina Karol handily won this award from the esctoday.com members.  The full results:

• Winner - Tina Karol/Show me your love (Ukraine)
• 1st runner-up - Carola/Invincible (Sweden)
• 2nd runner-up - Anna Vissi/Everything (Greece)
• 3rd runner-up - Severina/Moja štikla (Croatia)
• 4th runner-up - Sandra Oxenryd/Through my window (Estonia)

Carola - who did well in every category she was nominated - can not break out of second place winning 28 percent of the members votes compared to 30 percent for Tina Karol.  Anna Vissi earned a respectable 25 percent of the vote.  As with the other two categories the final runners lag behind with Severina capturing 10% of the vote and Sandra Oxenryd only earning 6 percent.

Band of the year 

The 2006 contest winners easily walked away with this award capturing a good 40 percent of the members' vote; the band who told us they were the winners managed to limp home with a mere 10 percent.  The full results:

• Winner - Lordi/Hard rock hallelujah (Finland)
• 1st runner-up - Texas Lightning/No no never (Germany)
• 2nd runner-up - Ich Troje/Follow my heart (Poland)
• 3rd runner-up - LT United/We are the winners (Lithuania)
• 4th runner-up - Cosmos/I hear your heart (Latvia)

Texas Lightning is well liked by the esctoday.com members, but Miss Jane Comerford's lucky blue, rhinestone-studded ukulele only brought the country band 24 percent of the votes in this awards poll to see them placed as 1st runner-up. This still seems to improve on the band's result in Athens where they only managed to achieve the 15th place.  Ich troje received 18 percent of our members' votes though they failed to qualify for the Song Contest final.  LT United's chant finished just behind fan favorite Carola in Athens despite their weak showing in this award category.  Cosmos took 7 percent of the vote.

Commentator of the year

Terry Wogan is practically a Eurovision institution in and of himself.  So it's not the least bit surprising that he took the award for Commentator of the year with no effort.  The full results:

• Winner - Terry Wogan (United Kingdom)
• 1st runner-up Pekka Heino (Sweden)
• 2nd runner-up - Jostein Pedersen (Norway)
• 3rd runner-up - Peter Urban (Germany)
• 4th runner-up - Sandra Studer (Switzerland)

Terry Wogan owned 54 percent of the votes in this category which ironically seems designed to elicit bloc-voting.  Of course Terry Wogan commentates in English and his comments were carried throughout Europe on BBC Prime's live Song Contest broadcast this year.  The other nominees however commentate in languages that are not as universal as English, and their broadcasts are more likely to be limited to one geographic area. 

The esctoday.com awards were determined by the readers of esctoday.com which is the largest and most visited independent source for news about the Eurovision Song Contest on the web. Registered members of the site were allowed to cast one vote in each category between 11th December and 23rd December 2006.  Nominations in each category were determined by the esctoday.com team of editors based on several criteria.

Results for the first categories can be found here .  More results from the esctoday.com awards will be released on Thursday.