What a year, what a Eurovision, what a national finals season, what a relief it's all over! Well, no actually! 2006 has been an outstanding year for the Eurovision Song Contest, the Junior edition, the fans, the artists and many more people. All week, there have been success stories…
Kate Ryan and Texas Lightning both finished 2006 with their Eurovision entries as the second highest selling songs of the year on home turf. Lordi's Arockalypse album has been certified triple platinum in Finland, Carola hit the top twice with her entry in Sweden – once in Swedish and then again in English, and of course, we heard reports that it may soon be an illegal offence to live in Greece without owning a copy of Anna Vissi's Everything!
Of course, the contests are over, and the first annual esctoday.com awards winners have been announced, well… almost! Three results remain!
The three awards decided upon by the esctoday.com team. So, below you will find the final award winners of 2006. Later this evening, we will provide some more information about the results, the closest categories and some final comments. In the mean time, the fans awards go to:
2006 esctoday.com member of the year:
Owen Williams
2006 esctoday.com chatter of the year:
Carmen, Malta
2006 Outstanding Contribution to EurovisionAward goes to…
Sietse Bakker, Amsterdam
This year, there could be no other winner. Sietse Bakker was the founder of esctoday.com back in 2000. It was the simple school project of a teenager that was done so well that it got out of control. When he handed over the site and left this summer, he handed over the , most popular and most visited independent Eurovision Song Contest website online. At the age of 22, he was rewarded for all of his efforts with the chance to recreate the official Eurovision Song Contest website. eurovision.tv launches next month.
Siestse achieved much more than simply creating a popular website. His knowledge, skill, ability to understand the people involved with the Eurovision Song Contest and his passion to help publicise and support the event, whilst maintaining his independence by refusing any donations or payments from any participating parties are tennants which guide the philosophy of the website today.
Never one to fight competition, Sietse has helped to guide and support many other websites over the years, and today esctoday.com boasts a proud list of partner websites that share information and help to provide Eurovision fans with a huge font of information. All of our partner sites share a love of the Eurovision Song Contest and a true passion about it's future.
He helped to create a community of Eurovision Song Contest fans across Europe and beyond, through the forum, the reactions section and by providing the most comprehensive and informative source of news about the Eurovision Song Contest. esctoday.com is grateful for his contribution, both to this site and the Eurovision Community, and almost six months on from his departure from our team, there is simply no-one better that we could find to present our first Outstanding Contribution Award to.
esctoday.com once again would like to wish Sietse and everyone at the EBU a very merry christmas, and to Sietse, the best of luck with his new venture. We would also like to remind the EBU that if at any point they decide to scrap their official site, to send Sietse home to usimmediately!
