| A popular performer will go to Eurovision from Russia Despite the competition of unknown musical talents announced several months ago by Channel One, a highly promoted performer will again represent Russia at Eurovision 2004. Yesterday, the director of public relations of Channel One, Igor Burenkov, said that it was decided to send Yulia Savicheva, a finalist of the Star Factory 2 project and the performer of the hit “Vysoko,” to the international song review, which will be held this year in Istanbul. The commission, which included channel executives and show business representatives, after viewing 700 tapes of young talents, decided not to take risks. Now the song for Ms. Savicheva is being urgently polished by producer Max Fadeev, and it will appear on television and radio after March 20.
True, betting on stars is not always successful. Sometimes Russians perform well at Eurovision, as was the case with Alsou, who took second place in 2000, sometimes it’s a complete failure. And last year, third place for the well-promoted Tatu became a slap in the face for viewers and Channel One - even the possibility of representatives of our country refusing to participate in the current competition was seriously discussed.
However, this year Channel One decided to play it safe by achieving changes in the rules for holding the Eurovision Song Contest. Let us recall that in Russia they believe that the “tattoos” failed largely due to the fact that in Ireland, at the last moment, the results of telephone voting by viewers were replaced by the assessments of the national jury, which rated the Russian representatives too low. Now the voting procedure for TV viewers will be revised. “The competition will have a single provider - the German communications corporation Deutsche Telekom,” Igor Burenkov explained to the Vremya Novostei newspaper correspondent. - It will carry out television voting in all countries participating in the competition. European Broadcasting Union live broadcast executive Sarah Ewen has been removed from her role and vote counting will now be overseen by supervisor Svante Stokeselius from Sweden. One of the most important factors in this replacement was the comments made by Channel One. True, this innovation will not affect Russia. Our jury will still assign seats. Channel One would be happy to use the televoting system, but according to the Eurovision rules, for this the provider must cover at least 80% of the country’s territory, which is not possible in our conditions. Nadezhda STEPANOVA |
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