Spanish broadcaster RTVE has just revealed that a total of 978 entries have been received to take part in this year's selection for Eurovision. This is double of the number of applications submitted in 2008. Nonetheless, only 455 are eligible to participate in the process, because the rest of them do not comply with the rules, especially with the “October 1st” rule.
Voting term to choose the contestants that will enter the selection Eurovisión 2009: El retorno starts tomorrow, Friday 19th, at 12:00 CET. Polls will be open for one month, until January 19th at 23:59 CET.
This year's call for songs in Spain has been very successful, with almost 1,000 (978) entries received by the broadcaster. The internal comittee has already overseen all of them, and as a result, the eligible songs have been narrowed down to 455 because most of the candidacies did not comply with the rules, especially with the rule of the 1st of October. Some of the hopefuls are already known to the Spanish and European public: Soraya, Melody, Coral, Rebeca, Mirela, Innata, Bizarre, Tontxu or Andermay.
As esctoday.com reported yesterday, 10 categories have been set, and the 455 entries have been allocated to them according to their musical style. This is the breakdown comprising the categories and the number of songs in each:
- Pop/rock, 188
- Ballad, 37
- Metal, 12
- Electronic, 63
- Latin, 29
- Hip-hop/rap, 9
- Indie, 18
- Flamenco, 10
- R&B, 19
- Others, 45
Every user can cast a maximum of 20 votes per day (5 percandidate). Votes must be submitted from a valid e-mail address. Nonetheless, RTVE will oversee the whole process with the aim of avoiding irregular or fake voting. The top ranked hopefuls will appear in a ranking that will be updated several times a day. 5 acts of each category will go through the next round, the televised galas, to be held in February.
Regarding the process to elect the 5th member of the expert jury, 26 candidates have applied. One of them will be selected on the RTVE website as well.
