Hungary

A couple days ago, Hungarian broadcaster MTV announced that they will not be participating in the Eurovision Song Contest next year due to a financial crisis.

The results of both semifinals have now been released by the EBU. They make interesting reading. The jury overturned the telephone vote to save countries in each of the semifinals. Quite annoying if your country finished 10th in the phone vote.

After Tuesday’s semifinal, this evening, we discovered who would fill the remaining places in the final on Saturday. Nineteen countries, including favourites Norway, competed for the ten available places. The hosts were Andrey Malakhov and Natalia Vodianova, who also hosted the first semifinal.

A week into rehearsals and finally the five countries already in the final took to the stage. Before that, it was the turn of some of the remaining countries in Thursday’s second semifinal to rehearse for the second time.

Day 4 saw the remaining participants from the second semifinal rehearse for the first time, followed by the obligatory press conference. Slovenia were the early risers this morning, Dutch group, De Toppers brought the day to a close.

Last week, we at Eurovisionary gave our predictions for the first semifinal. Now we turn our attention to the second semifinal.

Having previously announced that the public televote will be combined by a jury vote, the EBU have now announced details of how this new system will work.