[p2004]

This move doesn't have anything to do with the audience. Last year if you recall, Poland, Romania, San Marino, Azerbaijan and someone else were discovered by the EBU and its partners to have suspicious votes which appeared to suggest that they had a voting arrangement. They had to disqualify their votes in the semi-final and create an aggregated result for these countries both in the semi-final and grand final, which is why many a time instead of the face of some presenter somewhere in Europe we saw the face of Martin.

The move is primarily to disincentivise measures to "rig" the jury vote, as it makes it significantly less valuable - with these blocs not being large enough to significantly impact results in the grand final to make certain countries attain high positions. They need to be seen doing something to make it seem like the EBU is being accountable in its organisation - and the method they're using is fairly decent overall.

One concern is the return of entries pandering purely to the televote - however, it is worth noting that these songs will still need to compete in a final with a normal jury. The joke entries will, subsequently, suffer in the final and therefore pursuing the route of joke entries is not made particularly more attractive for your average country, who now primarily competes in the hopes of a good result or victory.

The rest of the world online vote, I assume, will follow the model that SBS trialled in Australia, where in place of a phone number you have a secure system online that allowed Australian viewers to submit paid-for votes.