Netherlands: Jan Smit leaves Eurovision Selection Committee

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Dutch presenter Jan Smit has officially decided to leave the Eurovision selection committee.  The committee has been in charge of the preparations of the country for Eurovision.  Smit was part of the Eurovision selection committee for ten years.

Jan Smit was one of the Eurovision presenters during the Eurovision Song Contest 2021.  He is also well-known for his role as the Dutch Eurovision commentator.  Jan communicate his decision to broadcaster AVROTROS in November 2022.  However, the news was not made public until very recently.  There were some speculations regarding Smit’s departure including his alleged opposition to the selection of Mia and Dion as the Dutch representatives.  Nevertheless, Mr. Jan Smit has denied these rumours.

Jan will continue working as the Dutch commentator for Eurovision 2023.  He will be joined by Cornald Maas, who is also a member of the selection committee.

Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper will represent Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest 2013.  They will perform in the second half of the first Semi-final.

You can watchour reaction by the Eurovisionfun team to their song Burning Daylight in the video embedded below

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for more news about Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest 2023!

Source: Ad.nl

Eurovision 2023: King Charles and Queen consort to reveal Eurovision stage!

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Their majesties King Charles and the Queen consort will be in Liverpool on April 26.  During their stay they will visit the M&S Arena facilities, where the Eurovision Song Contest will be held.  During their special visit, the king and the queen will unveil the stage, which will be ready by then.

Marking the first Eurovision contest to be held in the United Kingdom in twenty-five years, the King and Queen of the United Kingdom will be in Liverpool on April 26th to attend events related to the contest.  According to the official statement:

Their majesties will reveal this year’s stage and tour the M&S Arena, meeting the creative team, presenters and this year’s UK contestant Mae Muller.

After a visit to the arena, they will also visit Liverpool Central Library to mark the twinning of the library with the Regional Science Library in Odessa, Ukraine.  King Charles will unveil a twinning monument with the city of Odessa, in a live broadcast between the two cities.

This is not the first time that the royal family of a host country has attended the Eurovision Song Contest. As fans may remember, members of the Danish royal family, Prince Frederik and Princess Mary attended the 2014 Eurovision final in Copenhagen.  Also in 2010, Princess Mette-Marit and Marius Borg Høiby of the Norwegian royal family were present in Oslo.  In 2021 King Willem visited the stadium where the competition would take place to oversee the preparations.  In fact we can go back as far as 1986, when Crown Prince Harald, Crown Princess Sonja, Princess Märtha Louise and Prince Haakon Magnus attended the Eurovision Song Contest 1986 in Bergen, Norway.

As you can see, the Eurovision Song Contest has a significant importance in many countries apart from being a music festival.

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for more updates about Eurovision 2023!

The Netherlands: National final for Eurovision 2024?

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After Mia Nicolai & Dion Cooper were heavily criticized for their vocal performance in their two appearances at the eurovision preparties, AVROTROS director Eric van Stade hinted that holding a national final for the selection of the country’s participation in Eurovision next year is being considered.

Netherlands: “We know what’s wrong with it, the creative team is working on to get the vocals right”!

He explained to the Dutch press office ANP that the return of such a selection method has been discussed many times in recent years:

“Even after the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, the decision whether the Dutch entry should be chosen by the public or not will be discussed again, in a serious way with all involved. We have to look for a concept that works. Of course, we’ve all seen this not work in the past. We want to avoid that.”

The Netherlands used the Nationaal Songfestival as a selection method in the years 2009-2012. During this time period, the Netherlands failed to qualify for the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest.

In 2013, the country returned to selecting its entry internally, with Anouk finishing in the top 10. The following year, the Netherlands reached second place in the final with “Calm After The Storm”, performed by The Common Linnets. Finally, the Netherlands won in 2019 with internally selected “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence.

We remind you that the Eurovision commentator for the Netherlands, Cornald Maas, has expressed his negative attitude towards the possibility of holding a national final to select the country’s future representatives.

You can watch the Eurovisionfun team’s reaction video for the dutch entry:

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for all news regarding the dutch Eurovision 2023 entry!

Source: songfestival.be

Netherlands: Duncan Laurence was recruited to rescue “Burning Daylight”!

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The situation with this year’s Dutch participation in the contest appears to be more serious than expected. After the official statment that the country’s public broadcaster (Avrotros) was forced to take, due to the wave of negative comments received after Mia & Dion‘s live appearances at the Eurovision pre parties, now the last winner of the Netherlands and composer of the song with which the two young artists will compete in Liverpool – Duncan Laurence, announces that was recruited to help them in the battle they have to fight in the first difficult semi-final.

Duncan Laurence, with a post on his social networks, informs his fans that he will postpone the planned release of his new song, as well as other obligations he had, since in the next period he will focus exclusively on Mia & Dion and how they will perform better their song, Burning Daylight, in Liverpool.

This statement comes after Eric van Stade, a representative of Avrotros, who on RTL Boulevard, described precisely the problem facing this year’s representatives of the country in the contest:

We know what’s wrong, the whole of Holland has seen it. The creative team working on it is now continuing, right at those points, to get the vocals right… There were two new artists, two new talents. Only this year we see that the step (they have to take) to the big stage is much bigger than in previous years when we worked with young talents.

We remind you that this year’s Dutch participation was internally selected by the country’s public television. However, the Netherlands seems to be considering changing the selection system next year and returning to the national final method.

Below, see Eurovisionfun’s video reaction to the Dutch entry:

Will the Netherlands manage to qualify for the final? Tell us in the comments below!

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for all the developments!

INFE Poll 2023: The results of North Macedonia!

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For the seventh consecutive year, the second official fan network of the Eurovision Song Contest, the INFE network, in collaboration with the website EscToday, is conducting the INFE Poll.

Network members of the 21 local fanclubs have already voted for their favorite songs of Eurovision 2023 and are gradually announcing their results via EscToday.

These are the results from INFE North Macedonia:

  1. San Marino – 1 point
  2. United Kingdom – 2 points
  3. Latvia – 3 points
  4. Romania – 4 points
  5. Slovenia – 5 points
  6. Croatia – 6 points
  7. Sweden – 7 points
  8. Serbia – 8 points
  9. Finland – 10 points
  10. Italy – 12 points

The overall results so far, adding INFE North Macedonia’s votes, stand as follows:

  1. Sweden – 36 points
  2. Norway – 33 points
  3. Finland – 30 points
  4. Italy – 26 points
  5. Israel – 24 points
  6. Czechia – 19 points
  7. Austria – 16 points
  8. Spain – 16 points
  9. United Kingdom – 14 points
  10. France – 13 points
  11. Moldova – 11 points
  12. Georgia – 9 points
  13. Greece – 8 points
  14. Serbia – 8 points
  15. Croatia – 6 points
  16. Slovenia – 5 points
  17. Albania – 4 points
  18. Romania – 4 points
  19. Latvia – 3 points
  20. Australia – 2 points
  21. Netherlands – 2 points
  22. San Marino – 1 points

Source: EscToday

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for all news regarding the INFE Poll 2023 results!

Norway: Listen to the Italian version of “Queen of Kings”!

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A few minutes ago, Alessandra, the representative of Norway, released an entirely new version of her song for Eurovision 2023, “Queen of Kings”.

Alessandra Mele, won Melodi Grand Prix some time ago and thus, she is travelling to Liverpool, in the name of Norway. However, Alessandra also originates from Italy, and she just couldn’t resist adding something of Italian scent in her song.

So, except from the italian intro that was added to her song for her performance in Melodi Grand Prix, Alessandra now released a whole new version of the song, entirely in Italian:

We remind you that Norway competes in the first semi-final and is also the opening act of the competition part of the contest, as it will be the first performing country of the night!

You can also watch the EurovisionFun team reacting to the song from Norway, in the video below:

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the news regarding the Norwegian participation at the Eurovision Song Contest 2023, in Liverpool!

OGAE Poll 2023: The results of the Netherlands and North Macedonia

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The next countries to cast their votes for the OGAE annual poll are the Netherlands and North Macedonia.

The 105 members of OGAE the Netherlands voted the following countries:

  • 12 points to Finland
  • 10 points to Sweden
  • 8 points to France
  • 7 points to Austria
  • 6 points to Norway
  • 5 points to the UK
  • 4 points to Czechia
  • 3 points to Italy
  • 2 points to Spain
  • 1 point to Armenia

The 16 members of OGAE North Macedonia voted like this:

  • 12 points to Italy
  • 10 points to Finland
  • 8 points to Sweden
  • 7 points to France
  • 6 points to Norway
  • 5 points to Serbia
  • 4 points to Spain
  • 3 points to Slovenia
  • 2 points to the UK
  • 1 point to Croatia

The total results of the 19 clubs that have voted so far are the following:

It becomes evident that the margin between Sweden and Finland is gradually shrinking,whilst Croatia receives their first set of points.

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the latest news about Eurovision!

Source:Ogae International

Germany: Käärijä wins Songcheck episode two!

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In the second episode of Songcheck, the songs from the second half of the first semi-final were evaluated, as well as Spain from the Big5. The winner of the second episode was Finland’s Käärijä.

In Songcheck, the entries are rated by panel judges as well as the audience, the latter of which votes via a special application.

The results of the second episode were as follows (former the rating of the audience, latter the rating of the panel)

  1. Finland – 11.5 + 9.9 – 21.4 points
  2. Sweden – 8.5 + 8.0 – 16.5 points
  3. Czech Republic – 7.1 + 7.9 – 15.0 points
  4. Moldova – 5.6 + 7.1 – 12.7 points
  5. Israel – 5.7 + 5.9 – 11.6 points
  6. Spain – 5.5 + 5.8 – 11.3 points
  7. Netherlands – 5.0 + 5.8 – 10.8 points
  8. Azerbaijan – 5.7 + 4.4 – 10.1 points
  9. Switzerland – 3.6 + 6.4 – 10.0 points

After the completion of the second episode, the overall results regarding the first semi-final have been formed as follows:

  1. Finland – 11.5 + 9.9 – 21.4 points
  2. Norway – 8.6 + 8.3 = 16.9 points
  3. Sweden – 8.5 + 8.0 – 16.5 points
  4. Czech Republic – 7.1 + 7.9 – 15.0 points
  5. France – 6.4 + 8.1 = 14.5 points
  6. Italy – 8.1 + 6.3 = 14.4 points
  7. Croatia – 8.5 + 5.4 = 13.9 points
  8. Latvia – 6.8 + 6.2 = 13.0 points
  9. Moldova – 5.6 + 7.1 – 12.7 points
  10. Malta – 6.8 + 5.8 = 12.6 points
  11. Serbia – 6.0 + 6.4 = 12.4 points
  12. Israel – 5.7 + 5.9 – 11.6 points
  13. Spain – 5.5 + 5.8 – 11.3 points
  14. Netherlands – 5.0 + 5.8 – 10.8 points
  15. Portugal – 4.6 + 5.9 – 10.5 points
  16. Azerbaijan – 5.7 + 4.4 – 10.1 points
  17. Switzerland – 3.6 + 6.4 – 10.0 points
  18. Ireland – 3.8 + 4.0 – 7.8 points

https://youtu.be/rJHe-iZ5HSI

Songcheck continues with the songs from the first half of the second semi-final.

Source: eurovision.de

Stay tuned to Eurovisionfun for all news regarding our favorite contest!

Greece: Fotis Sergoulopoulos is announced as the Greek spokesperson for Eurovision 2023!

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During the breakfast show, Breakfast@Star, the name of this year’s Greek spokesperson was announced. The Greek spokesperson will be no other but Fotis Sergoulopoulos.

Fotis Sergoulopoulos is heavily involved with Eurovision this year, as he is co-presenting in ERT channel the show “Πρωίαν Σε Είδον την Μεσημβρίαν” along with Jenny Melita, a commentator for Eurovision 2023, and they have been providing the Greek audience with news related to the Greek entry for Eurovision 2023. Fotis and Jenny have also hosted Victor Vernicos, this year’s Greek participant.

Almost 2 weeks ago, an Instagram post featuring a photo of Fotis along with Jenny Melita and Maria Kozakou, the Greek commentary duo for Eurovision 2023 as well as with Yiorgos Kapoutzidis, a former Eurovision commentator, gave us a hint about the announcement of Fotis as a spokesperson.

 

Δείτε αυτή τη δημοσίευση στο Instagram.

 

Η δημοσίευση κοινοποιήθηκε από το χρήστη Fotis Sergoulopoulos (@serfotis)

It is not the first time that Fotis has his name associated with Eurovision. He was also the Greek commentator in 2007 along with Maria Mpakodimou and in 2021 he was a member of the Greek jury.

We remind you that Fotis is the successor of Stefania, the Greek representative in Eurovision 2020 and 2021.

Stay tuned on EurovisionFun for more news regarding Eurovision 2023!

Czechia:No musical instruments on the Eurovision stage!

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The Czech representatives of this year’s Eurovision,Vesna,clarified that their upcoming Eurovision performance of their song “My Sister’s Crown” will not feature any musical instruments.

The Czech folk band,which consists of 6 members,revealed on the newscast of the public broadcaster Czech TV that their final Eurovision performance will radically differ from the Pre-Parties’ one without unveiling any further details.

The viewers were also shown an extract of Vesna’s rehearsals for their Liverpool performance.

You can watch their interview here.

You can watch our team’s reaction video for the Czech entry here:

Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the latest news about Eurovision!

Source:Czech TV