In a press conference that took place a few minutes ago in Riga, LTV announced their revised plans for the Latvian preselection for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. Only one semi final will take place, followed by the final on 28th February.

In the beginning of December, last year, the Latvian broadcaster had announced the rules for Eirodziesma 2009, the country's preselection for theEurovision Song Contestand the semi finalists had been made known. Later in the month, it was announced that due to budget cuts participation in Moscow would have to be sacrifised. After negotiations that took place between LTV and the EBU and a discount in the participating fee granted to LTV, as announced in the press conference, Latvia is now back in the contest. LTV made it clear that Eirodziesma as well as Latvia’s participation in Moscow was made possible only thanks to the sponsors. Norwegian chain Narvesen has supported Eirodziesma since 2007. The other company to rely on is Latvijas Krajbanka (the oldest commercial bank in Latvia)

Eirodziesma 2009 will go ahead but with changes in the format announced previously. There will be only one semi final, held on 27th February when all participating artists will compete for a place in the final to be held the next day. Ten of them will proceed by televote. In the final, there will be a mixture of televote and jury vote and three songs will proceed to the Super final.

These are the semi finalists as announced in the beginning of December. It is not yet confirmed that all song will participate as some of them might have made other plans when Latvia's withdrawal was announced. The qualified artists have been called to submit signed confirmations that they are still willing to participate. The deadline for the submission is the 28th January, so after this date the final list of participants will be announced and the songs will be posted on the LTV Eurovision site on 9th February.

1 Edijs Šnipke- Make my day (Edijs Šnipke Edijs Šnipke)
2 Camillas –Time goes (RomÄ�ns Falkenšteins, Å�ina Kovaiko)
3 Valters Fridenbergs- For a better tomorrow (Valters Fridenbergs)
4 Johnny Salamander –Party (Johnny Salamander, Meldra GÅ«?a )
5 Iveta Baumane- Tic tac (Ingars Vilums)
6 Ketta –Without you (Pavel Murashov, Pavel Murashov )
7 Fidji –Don't want to say goodbye (Katrina Tene, Tarmo Keranens)
8 Aisha, Ella, Olga- In love we trust (Tomass Kleins, Guntars Ra�s)
9 Trianas parks – Call me any time you need a problem (Aivars Rakovskis, Agnese Rakovska)
10 Ginta Eke- Be yourself (Kristaps Krievkalns, Ginta Eke)
11 Madara Celma- Have to say goodbye (Madara Celma)
12 KristÄ«na Zaharova –Angel of mine (Martinš Freimanis)
13 Dace and FrÄ«dis – Running around (Dace Planare, Aivars Freimanis)
14 Sabīne Berezina- Bye, bye (Markus Riva)
15 Kristana Zaharova –I wish I could pretend (Lauris Reiniks, Gordon Pogoda)
16 Artists TBA –When the sun is going down (Arturs PalkeviÄ�s, Leonids Jevsejevs,
Sergejs Ivanovs)
17 Intars Busulis –Sastregumi (KÄ�rlis LÄ�cis, JÄ�nis Elsbergs)
18 Miks Dukurs –Aizejot (Edijs Dukurs, Miks Dukurs)
19 Girts Zebulinš – Place to be (Andris Barons, Brita Barone, Diana Dubrovska)
20 Aisha – Hey (Kjell Jennstig, Leif Golkuhl)
21 Artist TBA- Dynamite (Mikael Erlandsson)

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