I'd really love an alternative broadcast which shows the set changes rather than the postcards, I'm sure the people making the postcards are very good at what they do but they're almost designed to be as bland as possible, I'd much rather see a well oiled team perform crazy feats to get the stage set.
> I'd much rather see a well oiled team perform crazy feats to get the stage set
Not quite the same, but I witnessed a performance of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds where there was a complete failure of the stage systems about 15 minutes before the end. All the audio-visuals died and the mics cut off, screens died, animatronics went still, complete silence on the stage and only ambient light.
For about 10-15 seconds there was stunned silence on the stage and then one of the drummers in the orchestra started drumming his part again. A couple of the other musicians joined and quickly there was music. From our seat we could see the stage's equivalent of mission control - three people who'd been quietly sipping their coffee while the playlists unfolded. They went into overdrive like movie hackers trying to enter some system before the corporation goons reached them. They quickly got the audio side back and then worked on the lights and screens. They left the giant Martian war tripod to last but even that was moving within a few minutes. It was one of the most impressive system recoveries I've seen.
If a noun denotes a group of people – even if it's technically a singular noun – it's okay (but not compulsory) to use a plural verb.
The sentences 'Real Madrid have performed well this year' and 'Real Madrid has performed well this year' are both grammatically acceptable, and probably used roughly the same amount.
A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb (e.g. 'None of the players is good enough') but you'll now see it a lot with a plural verb (e.g. 'None of the players are good enough').
"none" is saying something about all of the players, so how would that be singular? The word "none" is always used in a plural context, like if there is only one player then you won't say "none of the player"
> A related example is the
word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb
And I'm questioning why you think "none" should technically govern a singular verb when "none" is normally a non-singular subject.
I'm sure both are being used, and at the end of the day what is correct is determined by how a significant amount of people are using the language. But I just don't understand why you think a singular verb would be more "technically correct"
Did you mean that because you could replace none with "not one" then it should be singular? But that only works because the 'not' applies to the whole sentence, so the remainder is about 'one', i.e. "not (one of the team was prepared)". But that doesn't work for the word none because you can't read it as the 'not' applying to a singular part-sentence.
The reason that last one isn't ok is that "who" refers to a person or people, not an object. "Crew" can either refer to a singular object or a plural group of people. Put together, "crew who" must refer to a plural group of people, so needs a verb that matches plural.
In Italian we don't have this distinction, when we use a collective noun we always treat it as singular (unless there are multiple collection, like multiple crews). Thank you for the explanation
Doesn't your advice contradict the BBC's phrasing? Collectively, the band lost its spot in the top ten. And, collectively, the crew has 35 seconds to prepare the stage for the next performer.
I think this is to some extent a British English vs US English thing; it's certainly more common to treat words like crew/company/etc as plural in British English. The linked article is being overly prescriptive, though. Both are basically fine.
I once read a Wikiepedia article starting with "Pink Floyd are..." and immediately hit edit. I saw a banner comment saying its correct according to British English. Since then I've noticed lots of "Company are...". I also wonder why India uses "Company is...". My guess is Britain adopted it after Indian independence.
This is a place where uou can use either. There is IIRC a letter of JRR tolkien where he discusses this very issue. "The crew" can be thouth of as "a set of people" (so you can say The crew has) or "severa people" (so you can say "the crew have").
Sometimes the BBC does make mistakes but this seems to fit their style guide:
"Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are some exceptions:
...
Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns (eg: Arsenal has declared an increase in profits)
Rock/pop groups"
So treating a crew, like a team, as plural makes sense.
'Crew' implies that it is a group of people doing this and therefore they have 35 seconds. You can reconstitute the sentence to check what you should use. In this case you could say in your head:" the crew as a team check the video feed. They have 35 seconds to do this." If this was referring to an individual it would be: "Peter checks the video feed, he has 35 seconds to do this."
I saw this in Malmo in 2013 and it was pretty incredible how fast the set changes were done. The other thing you don't see is just how close the cameras are to the performers.
Eurovision post videos of the technical blunders that happen during the live shows (some related to set changes) with side-by-side comparisons of what should have happened. An interesting watch! https://youtu.be/KeVaE8ldqfE
Same with tradeshows: I have many times been on tradeshows on buildup days. It is a huge mess, full of crates and packaging. Next day, everything is glorious and neat. Just for 3-4 days of 'show'
Oh, so that's real sand. I thought that was camera trickery. No way someone would be crazy enough to dump real sand on a stage while someone's performing live.
I’ve been a fan for almost 18 years, ever since some euro friends were talking about the voting system on IRC. Love the intersection between culture and geopolitics.
It's not what they say on the stage but how voters from different countries behave.
UK: 0 points total
Cyprus: 12 points from Greece
Azerbaijan: 12 points from Turkey
San Marino singer: A Turkish guy sings in English
Armenia: the song is in English instead of Armenian
It gives you a clue on what's going on in every country. How nationalistic they feel this year, are they fixing their issues with their arch enemies, are they opening up to different cultures, do they feel part of the community, is everybody still annoyed by the Brits and did they took the event seriously enough to send a good song etc.
And yet the event is full of politics. From the voting cliques and countries favouring specific allies, to lyrics with hidden (or not so hidden¹) messages, it's everywhere. A lot of it is on a meta level though, leading to an event which taken at face value seems devoid of politics.
1: Georgia's entry in 2009 was called “We Don't Wanna Put In”…
always has been. Eurovision almost each and every year had two streams of interest - contest itself and the technology and logistics behind it. I vividly remember the whole 1996 big talk around virtual stage tech by Silicon Graphics https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_268-hughes.pdf Their brand was even prominently displayed and mentioned before and during the live event.
> Reddit style drive by snark doesn’t work as well here imho.
Isn't this the only snark and drive-by comment around? I think it's more interesting, just as I think a pit stop change is more interesting in F1 than most of the race itself.
> Extra challenging this year with tensions running rather high because of Israel's participation. If they can manage to pull this year off without any significant disruption, then the overall security and orchestration really are top-notch.
On one hand, dozens of activists attempting to interrupt the show, red, black, and green flags in the crows (unless they were confiscated by security), and loud booing when a certain country receives points. Demonstrations outside against that country's participation. On the other hand, none of that. Muted microphones to prevent booing, pixelated crowd shots, and cameramen with strict orders to "pan the other way". Only Swiss people interviewed are happy because "music contents bring all people together!" It's like two alternative realities, one which is televised and the other which isn't.
Sanctions on Russia and not on Israel is EU policy. The EBU is likely content to leave this call to actual politicians (European Commission/Parliament), rather than taking a dissonant stance.
The EU and the EBU don't have much to do with each other. The ban on Russia was mostly due to several broadcasts threatening they would pull out if the EBU didn't.
For Israel the topic was seen as more divisive, and broadcasts didn't boycott it, though some spoke out against Israel's participation.
It is quite interesting that tensions should run high at all because of Israel since this is an European-centric show (don't ask why Australia is there)... Perhaps an illustration of Europe's "changing" demographics...
I'd really love an alternative broadcast which shows the set changes rather than the postcards, I'm sure the people making the postcards are very good at what they do but they're almost designed to be as bland as possible, I'd much rather see a well oiled team perform crazy feats to get the stage set.
> I'd much rather see a well oiled team perform crazy feats to get the stage set
Not quite the same, but I witnessed a performance of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds where there was a complete failure of the stage systems about 15 minutes before the end. All the audio-visuals died and the mics cut off, screens died, animatronics went still, complete silence on the stage and only ambient light.
For about 10-15 seconds there was stunned silence on the stage and then one of the drummers in the orchestra started drumming his part again. A couple of the other musicians joined and quickly there was music. From our seat we could see the stage's equivalent of mission control - three people who'd been quietly sipping their coffee while the playlists unfolded. They went into overdrive like movie hackers trying to enter some system before the corporation goons reached them. They quickly got the audio side back and then worked on the lights and screens. They left the giant Martian war tripod to last but even that was moving within a few minutes. It was one of the most impressive system recoveries I've seen.
The chances of something like that happening must have been a million-to-one, and yet still they played on
Very good.
I would absolutely watch a full-length behind the scenes version of Eurovision. The technicial aspect is a huge part of my fascination.
Fernand's Live Show Show has a great behind-the-scenes minidocunentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb_7uPzs188
I know this is not the right place for this but english is not my first language.
How is "have" the correct verb here? Shouldn't it be "has"? Like, the crew is the subject, and it has 35 seconds.
I'm trying to understand what I'm missing here, because I'm sure BBC did not make a mistake
If a noun denotes a group of people – even if it's technically a singular noun – it's okay (but not compulsory) to use a plural verb.
The sentences 'Real Madrid have performed well this year' and 'Real Madrid has performed well this year' are both grammatically acceptable, and probably used roughly the same amount.
A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb (e.g. 'None of the players is good enough') but you'll now see it a lot with a plural verb (e.g. 'None of the players are good enough').
"none" is saying something about all of the players, so how would that be singular? The word "none" is always used in a plural context, like if there is only one player then you won't say "none of the player"
I'm talking about the verb that follows 'none', not the noun.
'None of the team was [singular] prepared' and 'None of the team were [plural] prepared' are both correct.
You said
> A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb
And I'm questioning why you think "none" should technically govern a singular verb when "none" is normally a non-singular subject.
I'm sure both are being used, and at the end of the day what is correct is determined by how a significant amount of people are using the language. But I just don't understand why you think a singular verb would be more "technically correct"
Did you mean that because you could replace none with "not one" then it should be singular? But that only works because the 'not' applies to the whole sentence, so the remainder is about 'one', i.e. "not (one of the team was prepared)". But that doesn't work for the word none because you can't read it as the 'not' applying to a singular part-sentence.
Both "has" and "have" sound ok to me here as a native speaker.
Both of these can describe the same event:
- The cows have 10 seconds to enter the field
- The herd has 10 seconds to enter the field
In the case of "crew", the word can either mean
- The people who are part of the crew (like "the cows")
- The crew as a collective unit (like "the herd")
Which is why both sound ok
You would have to say 'which has', but then yes it works (and is more correct than 'who have').
Ok:
"The crew who have..."
"The crew that have..."
"The crew which have..."
"The crew that has..."
"The crew which has..."
Not ok:
"The crew who has..."
The reason that last one isn't ok is that "who" refers to a person or people, not an object. "Crew" can either refer to a singular object or a plural group of people. Put together, "crew who" must refer to a plural group of people, so needs a verb that matches plural.
This might help: https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ask-writer/are-words-...
In short:
When you’re referring to the collective noun as a unit, treat it as singular:
The band lost its spot in the top ten this week. When you’re referring to the individuals within the group, treat it as plural:
The jury had to sign for their ID badges.
In Italian we don't have this distinction, when we use a collective noun we always treat it as singular (unless there are multiple collection, like multiple crews). Thank you for the explanation
Doesn't your advice contradict the BBC's phrasing? Collectively, the band lost its spot in the top ten. And, collectively, the crew has 35 seconds to prepare the stage for the next performer.
I think this is to some extent a British English vs US English thing; it's certainly more common to treat words like crew/company/etc as plural in British English. The linked article is being overly prescriptive, though. Both are basically fine.
I once read a Wikiepedia article starting with "Pink Floyd are..." and immediately hit edit. I saw a banner comment saying its correct according to British English. Since then I've noticed lots of "Company are...". I also wonder why India uses "Company is...". My guess is Britain adopted it after Indian independence.
It's often proscribed, many style guides say 'the company is/has', sort of de-personifying it to the entity rather than the people that work there.
I think it's an Americanizm to say e.g. 'Apple have released a new iPhone'.
No, it’s actually more common to do this in British English than in American English, so it’s a “Britism” if anything.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Brit...
it depends on what flavour of English you speak. British English for instance tends to use plural for collective nouns.
This is a place where uou can use either. There is IIRC a letter of JRR tolkien where he discusses this very issue. "The crew" can be thouth of as "a set of people" (so you can say The crew has) or "severa people" (so you can say "the crew have").
Sometimes the BBC does make mistakes but this seems to fit their style guide:
"Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are some exceptions: ... Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns (eg: Arsenal has declared an increase in profits) Rock/pop groups"
So treating a crew, like a team, as plural makes sense.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/grammar-spelling-punctu...
Both approaches are regularly used, so it is now more of a style choice, hence being in the style guide.
The Economist style guide says Brits are more likely to use plural and Americans singular but writers need to make a judgement in context: https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/09/20/style-guide-ent...
Using plural for companies, orgs or teams is common in British English.
For example "Apple have released a new iPhone".
as a plural noun, it refers to the individuals part of the crew. similar to people, flock
'Crew' implies that it is a group of people doing this and therefore they have 35 seconds. You can reconstitute the sentence to check what you should use. In this case you could say in your head:" the crew as a team check the video feed. They have 35 seconds to do this." If this was referring to an individual it would be: "Peter checks the video feed, he has 35 seconds to do this."
Even native English speakers disagree on this.
I saw this in Malmo in 2013 and it was pretty incredible how fast the set changes were done. The other thing you don't see is just how close the cameras are to the performers.
Eurovision post videos of the technical blunders that happen during the live shows (some related to set changes) with side-by-side comparisons of what should have happened. An interesting watch! https://youtu.be/KeVaE8ldqfE
Same with tradeshows: I have many times been on tradeshows on buildup days. It is a huge mess, full of crates and packaging. Next day, everything is glorious and neat. Just for 3-4 days of 'show'
Oh, so that's real sand. I thought that was camera trickery. No way someone would be crazy enough to dump real sand on a stage while someone's performing live.
Maybe they should have prevented the blunder of a genocidal nation using their show to launder their image, but what do I know
> stroopwafels
Confirmed, that helps a lot to deal with stress!
Honestly this sounds way more interesting than Eurovision itself.
I’ve been a fan for almost 18 years, ever since some euro friends were talking about the voting system on IRC. Love the intersection between culture and geopolitics.
I have religiously watched Eurovision after seeing Lordi open up for Type O Negative in 2008.
To Europeans it is normal and old hat, but to an American like me it is almost too weird to be real!
What politics? Saying or doing anything political gets you mad shade thrown your way, a lot of bad press, up to expulsion.
I get that the big scrutiny against overt politics is something political in itself, but...
To me the strictness towards the presiding mainstream opinion, the forced harmony, makes it less interesting.
It's not what they say on the stage but how voters from different countries behave.
UK: 0 points total
Cyprus: 12 points from Greece
Azerbaijan: 12 points from Turkey
San Marino singer: A Turkish guy sings in English
Armenia: the song is in English instead of Armenian
It gives you a clue on what's going on in every country. How nationalistic they feel this year, are they fixing their issues with their arch enemies, are they opening up to different cultures, do they feel part of the community, is everybody still annoyed by the Brits and did they took the event seriously enough to send a good song etc.
<spoilers>!
The separate public and jury votes does now help with that, a bit.
And yet the event is full of politics. From the voting cliques and countries favouring specific allies, to lyrics with hidden (or not so hidden¹) messages, it's everywhere. A lot of it is on a meta level though, leading to an event which taken at face value seems devoid of politics.
1: Georgia's entry in 2009 was called “We Don't Wanna Put In”…
No politics but Russia is banned...
I think that it is rather as you suggest in your last sentence: There is strict "correctness" enforced, which is how things work in the EU in general.
always has been. Eurovision almost each and every year had two streams of interest - contest itself and the technology and logistics behind it. I vividly remember the whole 1996 big talk around virtual stage tech by Silicon Graphics https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_268-hughes.pdf Their brand was even prominently displayed and mentioned before and during the live event.
https://youtu.be/mmxNAU0_b0U?t=7954
Reddit style drive by snark doesn’t work as well here imho.
> Reddit style drive by snark doesn’t work as well here imho.
Isn't this the only snark and drive-by comment around? I think it's more interesting, just as I think a pit stop change is more interesting in F1 than most of the race itself.
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> Extra challenging this year with tensions running rather high because of Israel's participation. If they can manage to pull this year off without any significant disruption, then the overall security and orchestration really are top-notch.
On one hand, dozens of activists attempting to interrupt the show, red, black, and green flags in the crows (unless they were confiscated by security), and loud booing when a certain country receives points. Demonstrations outside against that country's participation. On the other hand, none of that. Muted microphones to prevent booing, pixelated crowd shots, and cameramen with strict orders to "pan the other way". Only Swiss people interviewed are happy because "music contents bring all people together!" It's like two alternative realities, one which is televised and the other which isn't.
Sanctions on Russia and not on Israel is EU policy. The EBU is likely content to leave this call to actual politicians (European Commission/Parliament), rather than taking a dissonant stance.
The EU and the EBU don't have much to do with each other. The ban on Russia was mostly due to several broadcasts threatening they would pull out if the EBU didn't.
For Israel the topic was seen as more divisive, and broadcasts didn't boycott it, though some spoke out against Israel's participation.
It is quite interesting that tensions should run high at all because of Israel since this is an European-centric show (don't ask why Australia is there)... Perhaps an illustration of Europe's "changing" demographics...