Tonight: Ukraine selects for Athens

by Richard West-Soley 134 views

Tonight it will be decided who shall represent Ukraine in Athens this May, as the TV talent show Ty-zirka (You're a star) reaches its conclusion. Tina Karol, Irina Rozenfeld and Kirill Turichenko are left in the running after a series of shows which reduced the original twelve performers down to three.

Ukrainian broadcaster NTU is keeping details of the songs and their authors under wraps until the show goes live. It is however known after enquiries by our colleagues at esckaz.com that Irina will perform a ballad, while Tina and Kirill will have a more up-tempo offering for the audience.

Unlike the previous Ty-zirka shows, the voting will not last 24 hours, and instead the winner will be decided after just twenty minutes of voting.

Controversy over selection process
In a related development, a group of Ukrainian artists led by the Head of the Institute for Musical Art, Alexandr Chunihin, have made a formal complaint about the selection process to president Victor Yushenko. They are reportedly unhappy with the organisation of the selection programmes, going as far as making allegations of faked results and biased coverage promoting one contestant in particular: Tina Karol. The group demand an assurance that the current organisers do not have the chance to run the Ukrainian Eurovision Song Contest selection again.

The winner of tonight's final will have to represent Ukraine first of all in the internation qualifier round in Athens, due to Greenjolly's poor placing for the home country last year.

The final of Ty-zirka starts on NTU's first channel at 21:00 CET tonight.

Richard West-Soley

Senior Editor

Richard's ESC history began way back in 1992, when he discovered the contest could fuel his passion for music and languages. Since then, it's been there at every corner for him in some way or another. He joined the esctoday.com team back in 2006, and quickly developed a love for writing about the contest. In his other life, he heads the development team at the learning resources company Linguascope, and writes about all aspects of language learning on the site Polyglossic.com.