Azerbaijani public broadcaster Ictimai TV has introduced yet another change to their Eurovision 2011 national selection. A new qualifying round will take place this Friday, January 28th in order to choose three singers to battle for the ticket to Düsseldorf. The show is likely to follow Ilhame Gasimova's concert, which is scheduled to start at 17:00 CET (20:00 local time).

According to the head of Public Affairs and Monitoring Department of the Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Companyof Azerbaijan,Tahir Mammadov, a special programme entitled Eurovision in Azerbaijan will be aired this Friday. The five remaining candidates in the race to represent the Caucasian country in Eurovision 2011 – Ilhama Gasimova, Aynishan Guliyeva, Eldar Gasimov, Ilgara Ibrahimova and Nigar Jamal – will be narrowed down to 3, which will qualify for the national final, to be broadcast on a yet unknown date. It is yet to bee seen the voting method for this new qualifying round.

Currently, a series of solo concerts for the five participants are being aired during this week. We have to take into account that the Azerbaijani selection for Eurovision 2011 has run seven qualifying rounds lasting for a week each and aired over November and December 2010. So it seems that this series of live concerts is yet another heat in this year's selection procedure in the country.

Besides that, broadcaster Ictimai TV has informed today that 29 songs have been received in their headquarters as of today. They have been composed by 16 authors from 7 different countries. From Azerbaijan, Vugar Babayev presented 5 songs, Ulviyya Valiyeva – 1 song, Nargiz Safaraliyeva- 1 song, Nazim Pashaoglu – 1, Nadir Azimov – 3, Rabiye Madatova – 1 song. Among the foreign composers, from Spain – José Juan Santana Rodríguez presented 1 song, Manuel Ángel Moreno Pinilla – 1 song; from Greece, Yiorgos Kalpakidis – 3 songs; from Romania, Madalin Botezatu – 1 song; from Australia, Sebastian Ivanov – 1 song, Noam Inbar and Isaac Mizrachi – 1 song: from Ireland, Torfi Olafsson – 4 songs, Micke Vennborn – 5 songs. Madura Mate and Kamran Cabbanov only submitted lyrics.