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

Thursday 22nd May saw the second of the Eurovison Song Contest 2008 take place, the second semi final.

This is the first time in the competitions history that there has been two semi finals, in order to determine which 25 countries go through to the final.

The second semi final was as good as the first if not better, the theme of the show was ‘water’ and included some special touches such as during one of the breaks, a viedo clip showing Serbian tennis star Ana Ivanovic welcoming viewers to her home city of Belgrade.

After the remaining 19 participants performed, the voting commenced. The voting revealed that the final 10 countires going through to the final were: Ukaraine, Croatia, Albania, Iceland, Georgia, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Turkey and Portugal.

The second semi final winners will join those from the first semi final (Greece,Romania,Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Russia, Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Poland and Norway) to battle it out in tonights final round of the Eurovison Song Contest 2008 in Belgrade. France, United Kingdom, Spain and Germany also join the group but their entries qualified straight to the final as they are part of the big four. 

The countries that are not going to the final and that are heading home include: Andorra, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, FYR Macedonia, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, San Marino, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Never mind and better luck next year, sometimes taking part is better than winning hahaha.

The final of the competition takes place this evening, you can watch it live on www.eurovision.tv.

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.