It is with great pleasure that I write this article. Please excuse the personal tone, but for once it is personal. Sietse Bakker, the man that created this site in 2000 has announced that he will be leaving esctoday.com to becomethe project manager for eurovision.tv and junioreurovision.tv, the official websites of the European Broadcasting Union.

Sietse Bakker has led esctoday.com for the last six years, developing a combination of a well designed site,a fair and neutral journalistic style that editors follow and a fantastic information database that assists fans, broadcasters, artists and managment companies in developing their knowledge base on the Eurovision Song Contest.

Sietse will now play a pivotal role in the development ofeurovision.tv and junioreurovision.tv, two of the world's most popular entertainment websites, will be completely rebuilt. The new websites are scheduled to be launched in early January 2007 and November 2006, respectively. He will leave esctoday.com as per 1st of August to become Project Manager Internet for the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest.

“Over the past six years, I've had the extraordinary chance to build up a great website along with an extraordinary team. Now there is this great new challenge to 'start from scratch' in an exciting environment with many opportunities” said Sietse Bakker.

Visitors of the sites will be able to experience innovative interactive and cross-media dimensions of the live TV shows. Sponsors of junioreurovision.tv and eurovision.tv will also be offered new and extensive online exposure opportunities. As part of the new strategy for the Song Contest websites, Nicoletta Iacobacci explained that the EBU is planning to create and distribute content in several ways to reach even more Eurovision Song Contest fans. "Sietse’s experience is a crucial part of the process”, explained Iacobacci. "We are delighted that Sietse Bakker has joined us for these projects” she added.

With great pride, everyone at esctoday.com would like to wish Sietse our very best wishes for the future. He has become a great friend to many of us as well as a strong leader and mentor to editors. We look forward to the challenge of working to continue the development of our site and the competition that he will now lead.