Today in Ukraine, NTU, the ukrainian state broadcaster announced a new national final to be held for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010.
Ahastily organisedpress conference was called today by NTU at 16:00 CET in Ukraine to announce the plans for the forth coming national selection format.NTU are under a tight deadline as theymust be able to formally present their representative and song to the Eurovision Song Contest – Heads of Delegation meeting in Oslo, on Sunday.
A new president of the state controlled broadcasted NTU today, Egor Benkendorf, was appointed by the new government of Ukraine. Song artists in Ukraine recently complained over that the current Ukrainian representative for Eurovision 2010, Vasyl Lazarovich, was selected internally and this was an unfair competition to anyone who wished to participate in the running to represent Ukraine at the Eurovision Song Contest.
The new format will comprise of two qualifying rounds to be held tomorrow March 18th and 19thwith a televised National Final to be broadcast live on NTU on Saturday March 20th.
In connection with the lack of funding to the National Television Company of Ukraine to host the qualifying round, the organisers appealed to the leadership of the new channel and studio Savik Shuster "for help in organizing the qualifying round."
The first stage of the qualifying round will be held tomorrow March 18th at 08:00 CET to 17:00 CETin the "Savik Shuster studios".In the first stage, will be open to all wishing to participate, subject to the requirements of the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest, ie. song mustn't be publically broadcast before October 1st, 2009 etc. In the first phase 20 finalists will be selected. It is unclear whether international particpants may enter the competition.
The results of the first phase will be presented at 18:30 CETin the broadcast program "Shuster Live"(TRK Ukraine).
On Friday, the secondstage begins, with 20 second previews of thesongs being broadcast across various broadcasters in Ukraine all day. At 22:00 CET, "Shuster Live"(TRK Ukraine) will broadcast all 20 songs in full.
On Saturday evening during a gala concert which will be broadcast live on Ukrainian television broadcaster NTU at 19:00 CET, a national final will be held which will determine the winner.
Full documents required for entrants is available on the unofficial website of the competition here.
In turn, Minister of Culture of Ukraine, Mikhail Kulinyak reported that the singer Vasily Lazarevic agreed to participate in the new selection round.
In addition, the winner will be declared by a televote and jury, but this as of yet remains unconfirmed.More than 50 people have declared their intention to participate in the qualifying round.
Vasyl Lazarovich was already selected to be the representative for Ukraine, internally by NTU earlier this year with the song "I love you".
