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Oops. SBS confirms voting time error for Eurovision: Aus Decides

"The on-screen graphic should have said 22:45 AEDT," says SBS after viewers point to confusion in Eurovision live voting.

SBS has conceded it misinformed viewers with the advertised time that voting was closing for Eurovision: Australia Decides.

But it maintains that voting did not close before all acts had performed.

“Voting in Eurovision: Australia Decides closed when Myf and Joel announced ‘Stop voting now’ – approximately 20 minutes after the last song at 2245 AEDT,” a spokesperson told TV Tonight.

“There was an error in the on-screen graphic that stated voting closed at approximately 2145 AEDT – the on-screen graphic should have said 2245 AEDT.”

The error was not confined to a Saturday night typo, with earlier advice from SBS last week also indicating a 9:45pm AEDT deadline.

On social media confused viewers were telling SBS the information on screen was incorrect. Some indicated their votes had not been received.

But SBS said, “The public vote was administered and audited by Ansible, who confirmed all eligible votes throughout the official voting period were accounted for.”

7 Responses

  1. The SBS website said and still says votes closed at 9.45 pm AEDT sbs.com.au/programs/eurovision-australia-decides/article/2022/02/09/how-vote-eurovision-australia-decides-2022. It wasn’t an onscreen error. Votes weren’t getting through after 9.45. Texts bounced with a message “not delivered”. Though apparently voters in Queensland could successfully vote till 9.45 AEST/10.45 AEDT.

  2. I believe they got confused with the timezone, as they normally work in AEDT yet for Aus Decides everything was noted by QLD time. In that sense, voting did end at 21:45 – just that it was AEST (or local QLD time), not AEDT. The twitter situation was even worse, with a tweet a 21:45 AEDT saying voting closed. Personally, I was getting failed responses to my votes from this point, whereas earlier they were going through.

    The lesson here is not to announce a closing time. It should be solely contained in the show, with an actual countdown on screen. Very amateurish.

    SBS also need to update their Eurovision page with the fact Sheldon won. There’s nothing there: sbs.com.au/programs/eurovision

  3. Thing is too SBS Eurovision twitter also tweeted voting closed at 9:45pm. Someone messed up. I couldn’t vote between that time and around 10pm too like some have said. Meaning the vote even though they reopened, could have costed one of the other acts, votes. I got charged for non votes.

  4. I tried to vote about 8 times between 9:30pm and 10:00pm in Brisbane and not a single vote got through. Clearly, there was an issue.
    P.S. Voyager should have won!

    1. Voyager won the public vote, so you can blame the jury for their loss, or even blame Voyager for not being good enough. Of course, they might have got more public votes (although, not more points because 60 was the maximum) without this chaos, as too Jaguar Jonze, who strangely finished fourth, beaten by G-Nation. Except for Voyager, all the acts after Sheldon at 6 (when voting would closed) performed poorly with the public vote.

  5. Show us the evidence! Too many people across the nation are reporting their votes didn’t go through well before 2245 Sydney time! Needs a proper investigation by authorities due betting and phone companies charging for service not delivered

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