Czech Republic: CT scraps televised national final: reverts back to online selection

by Sanjay (Sergio) Jiandani 832 views

CT, the Czech national broadcaster, has announced today that it has decided to scrap its initial plan to hold a televised national final in order to determine its Eurovision 2020 hopeful and entry, and will thus revert back to an online selection, as has been the case in recent years.

The Czech Republic was planning to hold a televised final in 2020, namely on 25 January at Prague’s Forum Karlin, but now has opted for its former selection format.

The Czech broadcaster made the announcement earlier today via its official Eurovision Facebook Page:

The national final won’t be televised anymore.

After a few weeks of long and very heavy decision-making, we have decided, due to many circumstances, to postpone the televised national selection for a year (maybe for the following year!). We wanted to do something really different and this year we felt it would just not work, so we decided not to do it.

We return to the online selection format from the past two years. But don’t worry, we’re doing our best to make the upcoming online national selection more interesting and exciting, so follow our social media channels for more information.

 

Czech ESC 2020 Online Selection Timeline

  • 06/01/2020- Press Conference to reveal competing acts
  • 13/01/2020- Competing songs published- Online voting kicks off
  • 26/01/2020-Online voting concludes

Czech Republic in Eurovision

The Czech Republic debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 with  Kabat and is yet to win the competition. The country achieved its best result in the contest in 2018 when Mikolas Josef placed 6th in Lisbon with his song Lie to me.

The Czechs have partaken in Europe’s favorite television show 7 times, out of which they have qualified to the Grand Final thrice, namely in 2016, 2o18 and 2019.

The central European land locked country has not been very lucky in the competition, after three consecutive years of poor results and non-qualification the Czechs withdrew from the contest in 2010 and returned back after a 5 year hiatus in 2016.

In 2019 Lake Malawi represented  the Czech Republic at the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv with their entry Friend of a friend. The trio achieved a 11th place in the Grand Final in Israel.