On Sunday the Maltese Islands woke up discussing the choice of Fabrizio Faniello to represent Malta in the Eurovision Song Contest final in Athens next May made the night before entirely through televoting.
Faniello won with his song "I do", composed by himself and written by Aldo Spiteri, and will represent Malta at the ESC for the second time.
Thanks to the public televoting that lasted for a much-debated short ten minutes, Faniello garnered 7,729 votes and secured first place followed closely by Olivia Lewis with the song "Spare a Moment" which landed itself 7,623 votes. Trilogy placed third with "This Heart of Mine" which earned them 4,954 points.
Indeed televoting, introduced to supplant the judging panel which attracted a lot of flak in past years, in turn sparked a new wave of controversy.
During various television programmes on Sunday many viewers complained about the problems that were encountered in sending SMS messages to vote for the songs. However, the Malta Song committee confirmed that this year practically the same amount of televoting and SMS votes were received as in the half hour allotted for voting last year.
Saturday’s festival was not void of technical troubles, with the songs interpreted by Fabrizio Faniello as well as Ali and Lis having to be reinterpreted due to sound problems.
The MaltaMedia Online Network can reveal that apart from Fabrizio Faniello’s winning song, the most popular songs judged on the click-through rate on EurovisionMalta.com, were You Too by J.Anvil; Spare a Moment by Olvia Lewis; Stay With Me by Lara; and Echoes Of Gaia by Natasha and Charlene in that order.
Anyone wishing to share views on this year’s festival can visit Toni Sant's Blog and post comments directly.
For more comments on the behind the scenes of the Malta Song for Europe Festival see also the Real Virtuality blog by MaltaMedia's Editor in Chief.
On Saturday afternoon MaltaMedia published a special edition podcast in relation to the Malta Song for Europe on Toni Sant’s weekly Mużika Mod Ieħor series.
See also:
Fabrizio Faniello to represent Malta in Eurovision Song Contest 2006
By Ruth Davies - Feb 5, 2006, 00:51 CET
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