Greece: Katerine Avgoustakis disqualified

by Stella Floras 483 views

As it was made known yesterday, the song submitted by Katerine Avgoustakis for the Greek Eurovision Song Contest preselection was already available on the internet since the beginning of November. As this was against the rules set by the Greek broadcaster, Katerine Avgoustakis has been disqualified leaving eight songs in the running for the golden ticket to Oslo.

After the announcement of the titles of the songs taking part in this year's Greek preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest, it was discovered that a remix of the song Enjoy the day submitted by Katerine Avgoustakis had been available on youtube since 5th November 2009. According to the rules of the Greek broadcaster, though, no part of the songs could be made available before the official presentation which will take place on 5th March. Today, during a meeting of ERT executives it was decided, as expected, that the song and the singer should be disqualified for breeching the rule.

The Avgoustakis' candidacy had been heavily discussed in the Greek press since the summer even before ERT officially extended their call for songs to the various local record labels. It was widely known afterwards that the singer's team reviewed many possible songs to end up with Enjoy the day.

It should be made clear that although the EBU sets the general rules applying to the participating songs, each broadcaster is free to set their own rules as long as there is no conflict with the EBU ones. For example, althought the EBU rule states that the songs cannot have been made available before October 1st, each individual broadcaster can choose to set a different limit after this date or non at all.

These are the eight songs in the order they will appear in the Greek final on 12th March.

1 Christos Chatzinasios- Illusion
2. Second skin – Game of life
3. Manos Pyrovolakis with Eleni Furreira and Don't Ask (Yannis Bantourakis) – I kivotos tou Noe (Noah's Ark)
4. Yiorgos Alkaios and Friends – Opa
5. Yiorgos Karadimos – Polemao (I am fighting)
6. Melisses – Kinezos (China man)
7. Émigré – Touch me deep inside
8. Eleftheria Eleftheriou – Tables are turning

Stella Floras

Thanks to Johnny Logan and Hold me now I fell in love with the Eurovision Song Contest, a love that's been going strong ever since with undiminished passion. My first memories date back to 1977 and the lyrics of Rock bottom, Dschinghis Khan and A ba ni bi are still engraved in my brain.

I joined esctoday.com in 2006 as a junior editor after being invited by Barry Viniker, I soon became Senior Editor and during the 2007 contest in Helsinki I was appointed Head of Communications. Today I hold the post of Head of Human Resources and I am proud to be working with the best editorial team in the world.