Eurovision voting results will be processed in 6 min.

Results at Eurovision will be processed in just six minutes, Digame company's representatives said.

The company is based in Cologne and is responsible for for the administration of the televoting system. The televoting system is one of the success stories of the Eurovision Song Contest, Deutsche Welle reports.

Natalyia Tsenkova, a team leader at Digame, says the staff need to be sure that the voting results from all countries are promptly and correctly entered into the system.

"The atmosphere is really tense here, we've involved all of our staff from Digame in the project. That means each individual country is being supervised," Tsenkova said.

Together with the two other team leaders, Werner Klötsch and Rene Klimkeit, Tsenkova is responsible for everything running to plan.

"We've got 60 people sitting here in the corridor telephoning the countries and each of them is there to ensure that the correct results will be given at the end. It is hectic and stressful. The telephone rings every minute," Tsenkova said. But in the end everyone will be happy when the event is finally over and the results have been announced by the show's presenters.

The company, Digame, organizes the televoting - that means, they pool the telephone votes from the participating countries, process and calculate them.

"The result is finally given at the end of the show and we ascertain the winner. That means we're providing the most exciting few minutes of the show," Tsenkova explained.

The voting regulations for the Eurovision Song Contest, a European tradition for 56 years, have often been amended. Until 1998, only jury members from each of the participating countries could allocate points. Nine years later, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decided that the public should adopt this role.

Each country's vote is now decided by both a jury and the public in equal measure. The Cologne-based company has been responsible for the administration of the televoting system since 2004.

As soon as the voting window is closed on TV screens, the team at Digame begin to collect the votes from each country. The points are then calculated. Digame then notifies each country of voting results so that the TV presenters can read them live on air.

The SMS messages are processed by Digame in real time and the outcome of telephone calls from a range of telephone service providers from across Europe are sent to Cologne. All the votes are collected within a few minutes.

Every result must checked," Werner Klötsch explained. "On Saturday evening, all the results will be processed in just six minutes," Klötsch said.

This year, viewers will have just 15 minutes to cast their votes, the same as three years ago. The telephone lines will be opened following the end of the last performance.

The 18 acts competing in the first semi-final of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in order of appearance are: Montenegro, Iceland, Greece, Latvia, Albania, Romania, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Israel, San Marino, Cyprus, Denmark, Hungary, Austria, Moldova and Ireland.

The contest will be held at the Baku Crystal Hall, built on the shores of the Caspian Sea specifically for Eurovision 2012. The hall seats 23,000 spectators and another 16,000 spectators will be able to watch the contest's semi-finals and final live on big screens.

The television audience of Eurovision 2012 is more than 100 million people in 50 countries.

Representatives of 42 countries will participate in this 57th contest starting 00:00 local time that is 8pm GMT.

The semi-finals will be held on May 22 and May 24 and the final on May 26.

Azerbaijan won the right to host the prestigious European song contest after the victory of Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal (Ell / Nikki) at Eurovision 2011 in Dusseldorf, Germany last May.


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