By Maja Gojkvoic

After the second semi final on Thursday 22 May, the EBU reveals that one of the ten contestants who qualified in thursday nights round was selected thanks to the support of the back-up jury, and would not have made it to the Final under the old rules.

The new rule was put in place before this year´s Eurovision Song Contest. The rule states that the top-9 contestants chosen by the televoters qualify for the Final. The highest ranked contestant from the back-up jury results and who have not yet qualified through the televoting, also qualifies for the Final.

After the first Semi-Final, it appeared that the televoters and the back-up juries selected the same 10 contestants to qualify for the Final. This was not the case after the second Semi-Final, as one of the 10 contestants who qualified was not in top-10 of the televoters. So, one of the qualified Semi-Finalists would not have made it to the Final without the support of the back-up jury.

In order to keep the Final exciting the country that was chosen by the back up jury will not be revealed until after the final inorder to keep the suspense high. The complete results of the two Semi-Finals will be revealed through www.eurovision.tv on Sunday morning.

By Maja Gojkovic

Last night was the first round of the Eurovision Song Contest; the first semi final. Representatives from all nineteen countries presented their songs all hoping to make it to the next round and represent their countries. Serbia pulled out all the stops for the show and really impressed the audience by producing an amazing set and even involving Serbian performers and celebrities to kick off the voting.

The theme of the show, presented by Jovana Janković and Željko Joksimović, was “City”, and the theme of the Second Semi-Final will be “Water”.

After all songs had been presented, televoting started in all the participating countries as well as in Spain and Germany, who are already qualified for the Final, but were drawn to vote in the First Semi-Final, while the other directly qualified finalists - France, The United Kingdom and Serbia - get to vote in the Second Semi-Final. Nine of the qualifying countries were decided by televoting.

The countries that qualified were Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Russia, Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Poland and Norway.

As bookies predicted Russia have a good chance of wining. I personally agree as the song is a beautiful ballad and definitely has a Eurovision song contest feel to it. Russia may have to watch out as Greece in my opinion have a tremendous chance of winning as the song is catchy, dance like and definitely something that could be a winning number. Although performances from Russia, Greece were catchy and definitely deserved to go through to the second round of the competition others were not so lucky. Countries such as Ireland, Belgium and Estonia will have to try harder next year as this year performances were nail bitingly awful. The first semi final seemed to be influenced by a pantomime child like feel as Ireland were represented by Dustin the turkey with a song Iralnde Douze Pointe was hilariously bad which in my opinion was a shame considering Ireland’s amazing success in the competition since it first started. Belgium were represented by Ishtar with a song called O Julissi, also a poor performance in my opinion. Estonia also added to the pantomime feel during the competition as the performance looked like three middle aged umpa lumpa childrens entertainers. They were represented by Kreisiraadio with a song Leto Svet.

All in all I think the first semi final of the competition got off to a good start. If you’re a Eurovision song lover like me then if you watched yesterday’s first round it definitely wet the appetite of us lovers and definitely got the ball rolling for the competition. Out of the qualifiers from the first round my money is definitely on Russia, Greece and Israel.

If you want to watch the second round of the semi finals you can watch the show live on www.eurovision.tv. The second round of the semi finals will be on Thursday 22^nd May. The countries participating will be Iceland, Sweden, Turkey, Lithuania, Albania, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Georgia, Hungry, Malta, Cyprus, FYP Macedonia and Portugal.

by Maja Gojkovic

The Eurovision song contest 2008 kicks off this evening with the first leg of the competition, the semi final. For the first time in the history in the competition there will be two Semi Finals held to decide which 25 countries will be represented in the Final.
The first Semi Final takes place today, Tuesday, 20th of May.
The countries participating in the first Semi Final will be Montenegro, Israel, Estonia, Moldova, San Marino, Belgium, Azerbaijan, Slovenia, Norway, Poland, Ireland, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armenia, The Netherlands, Finland, Romania, Russia and Greece.
The 19 participants are getting more and more nervous and tension is rising as they all are hoping to qualify for the Grand Final that will be held on Saturday.
The Semi Final competition will be aired live and will be shown live in all the 19 participating countries and also live on German NDR and Spanish TVE.
Other countries may also broadcast the competition as well, so check the timetables of your local broadcasters to see if the Semi Final will be shown in your country.
If you miss the Semi Final you will have the opportunity to watch it again as it will be available for 7 days on Eurovision TV.
The Semi Final televoters from the 19 participating countries will be able to vote for their favourite songs as well as the TV audience in Germany and Spain. The local televoting numbers will be displayed on screen during the show and will also be available on your national broadcaster’s website.
We at European Vibe will be following the competition, so if you’re a Eurovision Song Contest fan like me, I will be covering the highlights and lowlights of the show. So stay tuned for all the latest Info.
The second Semi Final will take place on Thursday 22nd May.

by Maja Gojkovic

The Eurovision Song Contest 2008 is the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest, and this years competition will be hosted by Serbia. The semi-finals will be held on 20 and 22 May respectively and the final on 24 May 2008 in the capital, Belgrade.
The contest wll be held in Belgrade Arena. The arena is among the largest indoor arenas in Europe, with a total capacity of more than 20,000 seats.
Serbia will be hosting the Contest for 2008 after Marija Šerifović won the Contest in 2007 in Helsinki, Finland.
The contest will be hosted by Jovana Janković, a daily morning show host and Željko Joksimović one of the most successful musicians in the Balkan region. In 2004, he represented Serbia & Montenegro at the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul, Turkey, with Lane Moje, and finished second.
For this years’ competition Serbia will be represented by Jelena Tomašević feat. Bora Dugic with a song entitled Oro. Let’s hope it is as good as last year’s winning song by Marija Serifovic- Moltiva.

Belgrade is known as Beograd by the locals, is the largest and capital city of Serbia. The city has almost 1,6 million citizens. Belgrade is located confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. It is the cultural and political heart of the country; it hosts several music- and cultural festivals across the city throughout the year.
The city is slowly becoming the new trendy place to be, it is still undiscovered by many people. The City offers various styles of beautiful architecture that dominate the city. Trendy hot-spots such as Knez Mihajlova is one of the most popular pedestrian only streets in Belgrade and offers a wide variety of quaint cafés and restaurants and is definitely a popular place to be seen.
With the help of hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, Belgrade have finally be given the chance to show off the amazing sights and exactly what the city has to offer.

The Eurovison Contest has been broadcast every year since its inauguration in 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world with audience figures reaching to anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally in recent years.
Eurovision has also been broadcast outside Europe to such places as Australia, Canada, Mexico, Egypt, United States, Hong Kong, India, despite the fact the countires do not participate. Since 2000, the Contest has also been broadcast over the Internet with more than 74,000 people in almost 140 countries having watched the contest in 2006 online.

The artists who achieved most success after thier Eurovision win that led them to a career and launched them into the spotlight were ABBA, ABBA won the Contest for Sweden in 1974 with their song “Waterloo” after this they went on to be one of the most successful bands of their time.

Other winners who have also achieved international fame due to a successful win at Eurovison include Céline Dion, who won the Contest for Switzerland in 1988 with the song “Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi”.

With regard to winners the country that had achieved most success has been Ireland. Ireland holds the record for the most number of wins, having won the Contest seven times which includes wins three times in a row in the mid 1990s.
In joint second place with five wins each are France, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom holds the best record at the Contest in terms of average scoreboard position; having finished in the top two in 20 out of 52 Contests from1956–2007.

The first few years of the 21st century produced a variety of first-time winners, from both “new” Eurovision countries, and old-timers who had entered for many years without a win. Every year from 2001 to 2007 resulted in a country winning for the first time. The 2006 winner was Finland, who had finally won after having entered the Contest for 45 years. Ukraine on the other hand did not have to wait so long, winning with their second entry in 2004. Serbia won the very first year it entered as an independent state in 2007. As of 2008, the country which has entered the longest with no wins to their name is Portugal. They started entering in 1964, and are still awaiting their first win.

For the first time in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest, two Semi-Finals will be held to decide which 25 countries will be represented in the Final. The first Semi-Final will take place on Tuesday, 20th of May.
Citizens of each participating country vote by telephone and SMS. Two of the so-called ‘Big Four’ (France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom) will also vote in this Semi-Final (to be decided by draw), and possibly the Host Country (also to be decided by draw). Each country’s 10 favourites are awarded 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points based on the number of votes. The top-9 of the tele-voting qualifies for the Final. The highest ranked entry of the back-up jury that has not qualified for the Final in the tele-voting also qualifies for the Final. The 10 qualified countries will be presented in randomly drawn order at the end of the show. The complete results of the tele-voting will not be announced until after the Final, to keep the tension high.

The favourites to win this years’ 2008 Eurovision Song Contest are Russia who will be represented by Dima Bilan with the song Believe. According to bookies PaddyPower the odds on favourites Russia are 10/3. Spain and Ireland stand at 25/1 with the UK in shocking position with odds of 300/1. Spain will be represented by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre with the song Baila El Chiki Chiki. Ireland will be represented by Dustin the Turkey with song Irelande Douze Pointe and the UK by Andy Abraham (Runner up of X-Factor) with song Even If.