Hello Europe, this is Athens calling! Or at least, almost! In 10 days, esctoday.com will be reporting about the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest LIVE from the place to be: Athens, Greece. But what exactly can you expect from your daily independent Eurovision website?

At esctoday.com, planning for on-the-scene coverage starts already in an early stage. The concept behind our coverage is to provide every interested group of people the most important and most interesting information and to give every individual visiting our website the feeling they are looking over our shoulder. Visiting esctoday.com must be comparable as much as possible with visiting the scene of the 51st Eurovision Song Contest in Athens.

Early start
The 'real thing' starts this weekend already! Tomorrow, esctoday.com in cooperation with The Harcourt Arms organises a special Eurovision Song Contest party in London to kick of the coverage of Athens 2006. Tickets for the party are still available here ! After the weekend, esctoday.com editors from all over Europe will start covering the media hype surrounding the contest in their respective countries, the preparations in Athens, the last-minute promotion efforts of the participating singers and a lot more.

Daily coverage
The hard core esctoday.com editors will arrive in Athens on the 8th of May to explore the city and follow the last preparations for the contest. As every year, you can expect daily reports about what's going on at the OAKA complex; rehearsals, press conference, suprise visits of the artists to the press centre, interviews, the welcome reception and everything else worth reporting. Our editors will be present at the rehearsals and conferences and of course, high-quality photo material of rehearsals and press conferences will become available throughout the day. Additionally, live reports will be provided to you during the dress rehearsals.

Video coverage
To serve you in the best way possible, esctoday.com teamed up with EurovIL (IBA) and oikotimes.com under the EuroJoint web alliance label. Thanks to this cooperation, we can provide you with daily video reports from the Eurovision Song Contest capital. Apart from atmosphere reports, we will also share interviews and daily news with you.

City coverage
While being in the most historic city of Europe (and maybe even the world), we can impossibly ignore the vibrant atmosphere and ancient culture Athens has to offer. Our reporters will regulary go down town to taste from the exciting atmosphere and they are eager to share their experiences with you!

New: daily mailings!
To make things easier for those who don't have the time to tune in to esctoday.com throughout the day, we will provide manageable, daily mailings with short summaries of what happened. Aditionally, these mailings will contain the next day's schedule as well! Would you like to receive these mailings as well? Make sure you're subscribed as esctoday.com member (it's free!) and that the e-paper check box is checked.

Are you ready for Athens 2006? We are!