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The Netherlands: Viewers’ interest wanes as Mia & Dion fail to qualify for the Grand Final!

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Viewers’ interest in the Eurovision Song Contest continues to wane as Dutch duo Mia Nicolai and Dion Cooper failed to qualify for the final.

More generally, there was critisism of the duo by serveral compatriots and also by the country’s own National Broadcaster. A few days before the rehearsals started, statements were made by the country’s public television Avrortos and also by a composer of the song and Eurovision 2019 winner Duncan Laurence.

You can find more about it in our articles here and here.

The Dutch delegation did their best to “rescue” the song and the artists reputation, but they did not succeed and this was shown by yestrday’s exclusion.

Viewers who tuned in to watch the first Semi-Final averaged 2,124,000 and had a 40% audience share. Although the competition was the most-watched show, viewership was down 100,000 from 2022.

During the competition, up to 4,727,000 viewers tuned in to watch the broadcast via NPO1, up from nearly 5.1 million viewers in 2022.

The conclusion is that interest will be lost even more, because this year’s participation was the first since 2015 to not qualify, with the qualifying streak ending in 2023.

Stay tuned to EurovisionFun for all the latest developments regarding Eurovision 2023! Follow us on all social media, so you do not miss a thing of what will happen in Liverpool:

 

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

The Netherlands:Commentator Cornald Maas is hesitant towards a national final possibility

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The experienced Dutch commentator of Eurovision, Cornald Maas, voiced on Twitter his negative attitude towards the possibility of hosting a national final for the selection of the future representatives of the Netherlands.

In response to Dutch sociologist Sjors Joosten’s article, published in NRC Handelsblad, arguing that the Netherlands should follow Sweden’s example and organize a Melodifestivalen-style national final, Cornald Maas stated:

Hear hear? I would say: think think. Leaving out the upcoming competition: All (Dutch) national finals since 2004 have resulted in only a single qualification to the final. From 2013 onwards (internal selection), we are always in the final. Or maybe you just want an orange national celebration?

In a subsequent tweet, after having being asked why the selection method is not democratic anymore,he commented the following:

It doesn’t work at the moment if we want to guarantee quality. The music industry is not willing to participate in a national final in the Netherlands, unlike in Sweden. Even “in the background”, big/good names with good songs do not want to compete here, as it has been proven more than once.

In spite of the fact that holding a Dutch national final does not seem likely in the near future, Cornald Maas did not rule out seeking for alternative,more democratic selection processes such as plebiscites.

The Netherlands is a country that has established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the competition,with a considerable amount of remarkable entries that gave them various top-10 placements,including a 9th, a 2nd and even a top position in the scoreboard ever since the reintroduction of the internal selection process.

The Greek cooperating broadcaster ERT may find themselves at the crossroads between the internal selection and the national final on account of the fact that ever since the implementation of a selection process similar to the Dutch one (submission of proposals by interested artists and selection by an artistic committee), they have returned to the final (2019) and to the top 10 subsequently (2021,2022).

 

Do you think a Melodifestivalen type national final could be successfully held in Greece? Would it capture the interest of well-known/respectable artists and record companies? Would the Greek public make the right choice?

 

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