BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

22/01/2007

Tonight: Belarus decides for Helsinki

Tonight, Belarus will decide for its fourth representative and song in the Eurovision Song Contest. On 15th December 2006, a jury and televoting chose three out of 15 competing artists to move forward to the final round broadcast tonight. A jury is going to decide the eventual winner of Eurofest.

The show

Child stars Xenia Sitnik, winner of the 2005 Junior Eurovision Song Contest and Andrey Kunets, who represented Belarus in the 2006 edition will open the show. Carola, who represented Sweden three times in the adult version (3rd in 1983 eith Framling, winner in 1991 with Fangad av en stormvind and 5th in 2006 with Invincible) is going to perform the interval act as well as Dima Bilan from Russia (2nd in 2006 with Never let you go), Marie N (1st in 2002 with I wanna) and Cosmos (16th in 2006 with I hear your heart) from Latvia. The Road to Eurovision final show will start at 19:20 CET at the Palace of Sports, hosted by Denis Kurian and by Olga Schlager.

Webcast / satellite

A webcast of Belarus TV can be found here.

Satellite information:

BRTC: INTELSAT - 904 60.0E / 11 529 V

The songs

1. Diana Gurtskaya - How long

2. The Project - S.U.P.E.R.S.T.A.R.

3. Dmitry Koldun - Work your magic

Actually, Dmitry Koldun performed the song Angel mechty in then national qualification round but decided to change it for the final, which is allowed accoring to the rules of the Belrussian broadcaster. They also reserve the right to choose another song for the selected singer. That already happened in 2005, when Angelica Agurbash won the Belarussian final with Boys and girls. Nevertheless, the song has been changed to Love me tonight later.

Belarus competed for the first time in 2004 in the semi final round and has yet to make it to the Eurovision Song Contest final. In 2006, Polina Smolova finished 22nd - 2nd from last - with the song Mum. Therefore, the winner of Eurofest 2007 will have to go through the semi final in Helsinki.

Source:

http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/7317