October 22 ➡️ the latest #Eurovision headlines

GERMANY – Sebastian Schub withdraws from Germany’s national selection stating: “Shortly after the ESC workshop in Cologne, I was occupied with other projects, so unfortunately there is no time left to compete in the German national final. It would surely be an honour representing Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv next year. I wish the best of luck to all of the remaining candidates!”

The national broadcaster replied: “We regret Sebastian’s decision, but also understand he is currently receiving job offers, which he cannot refuse. There will certainly be collaborations with Sebastian. In the past few weeks we were able to meet with a very talented and sympathetic person.”

SPAIN – Watch one more slang performance of Eleni Foureira in Barcelona. The past few days Eleni was in London, Barcelona and Madrid.

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Spain 🇪🇸 Barcelona goes frenetic with the @foureira performance @eurovision @oikotimes #eurovision #oikotimes

A post shared by OIKOTIMES EUROVISION (@oikotimes) on Oct 21, 2018 at 10:38am PDT

GREECE – Greek national broadcaster reported 70 million Euros in profit (!) although its TV ratings are below even 10%. 50 million returned to the central government budget. Weirdly, despite those profits ERT still demands sponsorships for Eurovision.

SPAIN – Carlos Jean presents his initiative ‘La Canción Perfecta’ in order to find the winning song for Eurovision: “I think we all agree that we have to find some formula that can help us to place higher in Eurovision. After all these years trying to do a good job, we forgot about something. Castings, tests…have shown that we can discover anonymous artists that can perform very well. But we haven’t done that with something that important — or even more important — as it’s the song composition. After all these years in the music industry, I might have found the formula to create the perfect song. And it will be perfect because you will compose it.”

UNITED KINGDOM – The UK Parliament rejects petition to make the date of the Eurovision final a national holiday.

GEORGIA – Georgia will use Georgia Idol will be its method to select its entrant. In an interview, Georgia’s Head of Delegation, Natia Mshvenieradze has confirmed that it will also use the contest to pick its entry for next year.

IRELAND – Galway singer Brendan Murray has sailed through his first X Factor live show, impressing with his rendition of the Ariana Grande hit Break Free on Saturday night. However, while mentor Louis Tomlinson and judges Robbie Williams and Ayda Field were thrilled by his performance, Simon Cowell wasn’t as easy to impress. Simon was booed when he said he thought the start of Bredan’s song was “boring”. Brendan didn’t appear to be put out though as he took to Twitter afterwards to say he was happy with how the night went. He wrote: “I’m happy with the performance I gave! Thank you so much for all your support it means the world to me.” Brendan faced a nerve-wracking wait on Sunday night as he waited for the results of the public vote but he had nothing to worry about as his fans’ votes saved him.

October 19 ➡️ the latest #Eurovision headlines

KAZAKHSTAN – Khabar Agency is not satisfied with their first participation in Junior Eurovision and they want to get permission to enter the senior edition. The CEO of Kazakh broadcaster Khabar Agency, Mr Alan Azhibayev recently stated that his country wants badly to enter the Eurovision Song Contest and promises to bring fresh air to the contest: “Eurovision is all about diversity of cultures and music genres. Kazakhstan’s music industry is diverse as well. I think our artists could broaden the contest’s program and introduce their unique music to viewers around the world.”

ISRAEL – Israeli national broadcaster launched a tender for the production of the post cards with an estimated cost of around 715,000 Euros. The tender specifies that there must be thorough research on the locations, there should be pilot versions presented to KAN and EBU, the producer and creative director must have experience with at least ten similar productions and must have handled at least three productions in the last three years with a minimum budget of 1,2 million Euros. KAN also plans to produce a 5-minute clip with all the the performing artists which might man that the nations parade could be recorded.

ITALY – Sanremo Festival received 677 songs, 5% more submissions this year in the Giovani category. 19 of those having submitted a song are out of Italy. In a change to the format of the festival, the newcomers will compete in a separate show in December. Two of them will proceed to the February live shows.

ISRAEL – Lior Suchard reportedly among final four candidates to host song contest. Shiri Maimon, and well-known TV hosts Erez Tal and Lucy Ayub are also tipped by the press for the hosting job. After completing three years of military service as a Patriot fighter in the Israeli Air Force, Suchard began to increase his appearances in Israel. His first national television exposure was on various morning shows.

In 2005 he was invited to appear on The Successor (also known as The Next Uri Geller), Uri Geller’s Israeli TV show, which was aired in late 2006. Suchard beat eight other candidates and won the competition to be Geller’s successor. This was an international breakthrough for Suchard because the program was sold to and broadcast in several countries, including Germany, Poland and Italy.

GERMANY – Indie artist Drangsal is not happy he wasn’t selected for the next phase of German selection. “My performance would have been monumental in nature is self-evident.” Was text in his social media while he criticises Germany’s Eurovision selection for being full of “unqualified” singing show contestants.

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It was all a dream… Die 20 Kandidaten für den deutschen ESC-Vorentscheid stehen fest und euer Freund Dr. Angsal ist keiner von ebenjenen Auserwählten, trotz (oder eben gerade wegen) aller Bemühungen meiner- und unsererseits, des beachtlichen Songwriting-Teams inklusive Hit „Love Is Love“, der öffentlich zur Schau gestellten Bereitschaft und zahllosen fruchtbaren Aufrufen in den sozialen Netzwerken. Ohne zu sehr in Mutmaßung abzudriften (und den trollenden musikalischen Wutbürgern zu viel Futter zu geben), war mir klar, dass ich als eigenständig-denkender und -agierender Künstler, gar mit eigenem Song (unverzeihliche Unverschämtheit) und eigenen Ideen samt lautstarker Fanbase den Lemmingen des Grand Prix und „Experten“ ihrer Jury von Anfang an ein Dorn im Äuglein war. Viel Erfolg mit den verformbaren Ja-Sagern und Castingshow-Viertplatzierten, die keiner ernst nimmt und die nicht mal wissen, was ein Akkord ist — macht nix, denn dafür habt ihr ja euren „Kandidaten-Workshop“, in dem ihr gediegen den/die „Künstler/in“ erkiesen könnt, der/die am wenigsten Grüze im Kopf hat und ihm/ihr dann direkt den passenden drögen Song auf den Leib schneidert. Dass meine Performance monumentaler Natur gewesen wäre, ist selbstredend. Lasst @eurovision_de gerne ein letztes Mal wissen, wie wir diesen Fehltritt finden und habt aus tiefstem Herzen endlos Dank für eure Unterstützung. Schäm dich, Deutschland und trau dich in Zukunft doch auch mal was! PS: Ich bin nicht böse, nur enttäuscht, lol. PPS: Wir haben nicht mal eine Absage bekommen, wir mussten explizit nachfragen. PPPS: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #DRANGSAL4ESC2019 will never die!

A post shared by DRANGSAL (@drangsal) on Oct 4, 2018 at 8:39am PDT

IRELAND – Brendan Murray has revealed how he was affected by his experience representing Ireland at Eurovision last year.
The Galway singer, who had previously been a member of boyband Hometown, failed to make it to the final of the high profile song competition with the song Dying to Try.

“I have had a few knocks in the past with Eurovison and other opportunities,” he told Eoghan McDermott on his 2FM show on Tuesday. It wasn’t a happy time for me if I’m honest as lot of people thought my music career was over at such a young age so that affected me I suppose. I went back to pub gigging and took up an apprenticeship plumbing for a year. That was my life for a year. It was a very big change for me.”

BULGARIA – Responding to the withdrawal of BNT from the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, EBU wishes to see them back soon.

GREECE – Following her new single release, Helena Paparizou, the 2005 Eurovision winner for Greece, stated that “Eurovision isn’t over for me and a third participation in the future is still in my mind.”

Speaking on the leak of Fuego demo with her voice, she stated: “It was bad that the demo leaked. It wasn’t right. Everybody does a lot of demos which would then be performed by other artists. It’s not nice neither for me or Eleni. She was brilliant and should have won this year’s Eurovision.”

GREECE – Speaking of the devil, it seems that a special show is set on January 12th in Israel as a tribute to the 40 years since the country’s first hosting of the event and also Netta’s victory. The revelation (but without further details about the event), took place by Elpida, the 1979 Greek entrant who’s invited to the event. Stay tuned for more info…

SWEDEN – Marika Carlsson is tipped by Aftonbladet as the #melfest 2019 hostess. Carlsson was born in Ethiopia and was adopted by a Swedish couple at age two. She grew up in the town of Lund in Sweden’s Skåne province. Carlsson studied theatre and acting in Gothenburg before moving to Stockholm to break into the standup comedy circuit. In 2006 she was awarded the prize for best female standup comedian at the annual Swedish comedy awards. She is probably best known from the popular panel game show Parlamentet on TV4, which parodies Swedish political debate. Carlsson has also featured in other TV shows such as, Stockholm Live, 100%, Carin 21.30, Grillad, Comedy fight Club Roast på Berns, Kvällsöppet, and as the host for SVT’s televised coverage of the 2010 National Day of Sweden.