The 'invisible crew' who have 35 seconds to prevent a Eurovision blunder

> 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.

I would absolutely watch a full-length behind the scenes version of Eurovision. The technicial aspect is a huge part of my fascination.

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').

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

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.

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 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’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.

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.