The eighth esctoday.com TOP TEN list starts today with the places 7 and 6 being announced. As announced on Saturday, this week's topic are the TOP TEN most crazy national final formats.

National final formats that met one or more of the following criteria were considered:

• strange/complicated/unsual voting system
• overly lengthy process/unusual selection of finalists
• high effort turns out to be needless

This list is about formats, so strange/unexpected results and bizarre entries, performances and presentations are not considered.

So we continue…

No. 7 – Evroba?�?�ennja 2005

Ukraine was the host country of the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 and for the first time, the Ukrainian broadcaster decided to hold a televised national final in order to select the country's entry for the competition. A lengthy semi final round was held and eventually, a song won that did not even have to go through it…

More than 500 songs were submitted to NTU and a jury chose no less than 75 of them to compete in the semi finals. Fifteen semi finals were held between November 2004 and February 2005 and televoting chose one of the five songs competing every week to move forward to the next round. Already at this stage, the semi finals were sort of pointless in a way as many songs that competed had already been published before October 2004 and would have not been allowed to represent Ukraine in Kyiv anyway. When it looked like the line-up of the final was complete, Ukrainian vice prime minister Mykola Tomenko came up with the idea to give four artists a wildcard in order to reflect the recent political changes in the country. To cut a long story short, Greenjolly won the national final with their song Razom nas bahato, which was considered the hymn of the Orange Revolution making fifteen weeks of semi finals seem pointless after all.

The national final was no success for Ukraine in the end. The lyrics of the song had to be changed in order to not present a political message on stage and Greenjolly only finished 19th in Kyiv, which remains the country's worst result to date. Two of the singers who took part in the semi finals, Tina Karol and Ani Lorak, however would later represent their country in 2006 and 2008 reaching far higher places.

Ani Lorak's ineligible entry Another little shot, which was published before October 2004:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPq7QtOUUH8

No. 6 – Canzonissima 1971

In 1971, it was the Flemish broadcaster's turn to select the Belgian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. The national final format they created turned out to include one of the most complicated voting systems in the semi final stage ever…

Ten semi finals were held before the final of Canzonissima 1971. In the first semi final, the ten artists in the running each presented one song. Three of them were chosen by a jury and a fourth one was chosen by postcard voting to compete again in the second semi final with the same song. The other six performed a new song in the second semi final, where the same voting system was used. If a song reached the top four in three different semi finals, it was allowed to compete in the national final. This went on for ten weeks until the line-up for the final was complete. Micha Marah and Mary Porcelijn both qualified for the final with three songs and Nicole & Hugo, Joe Harris, Johny White, Kalinka and Johann Stollz all had one song in the running. The jury then decided that Nicole & Hugo should represent Belgium in Dublin with the song Goeiemorgen, morgen.

At the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, it was proved that an elaborate national final format does not always pay off: Goeiemorgen, morgen only finished equal 14th among the 18 competing entries. However, the song was not performed by the original duo Nicole & Hugo, as they suffered from jaundice. They were replaced by Jacques Raymond (who already represented Belgium in 1963) and Lily Castel. Nicole & Hugo got their chance to represent Belgium in 1973, but only finished last with Baby, baby.

Dag vreemde man, runner-up entry in 1971 that became a classic:

Tomorrow, we will introduce no. 5 and 4 on the list.