Newcomer nations prepare for Eurovision 2004

by Bjørn Erik Opheim 365 views

While Serbia and Montenegro is preparing to stage a prototype of a music festival, named Beovizija after the capital Belgrade, which will serve as experience for their national final next year, the broadcaster BTRC of Belarus stated that they will organize a national final as well, called At Europe's Crossroads, where the winner will be selected through televoting.

It can be expected that the national final of Serbia and Montenegro the coming year will be entitled Beovizija 2004 as the broadcaster doesn't hide the multitude of connections this festival will have with the Eurovision past, present and future. The strongest sign is the way the jury has been put together. It is said that every single one of the nine jury members are former participants in the Eurovision Song Contest. Maybe the most well-known jury members being Baby Doll, who call herself Babi Dol in her home country, and Extra Nena. Baby Doll was the last artist to represent the former republic of Yugoslavia before the country disappeared. They performed respectively Brazil and Ljubim te pesmama. Lola Novakovic, who was the second artist to represent the Balkan nation, and who earned the second best result in the Eurovision history of Yugoslavia with the fourth position for Ne pali svetla u sumrak in 1962, has also been engaged as a jury member. The deadline to submit songs has been set to February 25.

From sir Avakov, the manager of BTRC, the national broadcaster of Belarus, we learned that “it's not necessary to have a popular artist in the final, it's only necessary to have a good song”.