Belarusian participant of Eurovision-2010 to be chosen by special focus group

As ERB has found out, a nation-wide voting will not be organized this year and our singer will give a performance in Oslo without any previous promotional tours
Unlike last year’s selection tour, accompanied with a song contest “Eurofest”, viewers’ voting and wide-scale promotional tours, the Belarusian representative will be chosen according to a simplified scheme this year. The press secretary of the Belarusian State Broadcasting Company Svyatlana Kraskouskaya-Smalonskaya has informed ERB that a special focus-group will consider applications and chose the winner.
Svyatlana Kraskouskaya-Smalonskaya: “Everything will be quite transparent, dynamic and open this year. A special focus group will chose the official representative who will take part in the first semi-final of the contest. There will be no large-scale promotional tours”.
The focus group will consist of representatives of different Belarusian TV channels: ONT, STV, LAD and BT.
Applications will be accepted until February 15. However, the jury will consider songs even if they are sent a bit later.

Svyatlana Kraskouskaya-Smalonskaya: “The majority of applications are usually sent at the end of the term if not on the last day. They are accepted according to their postmarks which means that if we receive it later but the postmark will say February 15 we will be obliged to consider it”.
Thus, the singer who will represent Belarus in the European musical arena will be chosen at the end of February.

Let us remind you that the higher authorities decided to entrust the ONT channel with the preparation for the contest after last year’s scandalous failure at Eurovision.  A special entertaining TV project “Musical Court” was created and its jury and viewers selected songs worth of taking part in the Eurovision there.

However, the ONT channel was refused membership in the European Broadcasting Union last December thus depriving it of the right to get ready for the Eurovision. The Belarusian Broadcasting Company has received the status of the official organizer of the selection for the contest. The First Channel will present live broadcasts from Oslo this year.
As ERB has found out, not all candidates know that they have to send applications to the Belarusian State Broadcasting Company to have a chance to take part in the Eurovision. A member of the band “Tyani-Tolkai” Paval Klysheuski whose song took part in “Musical Court” has got to know about it from ERB:

Paval Klysheuski: “Oh, I didn’t even know! It is the second contest? Does it mean I can send the song to the State Broadcasting Company? Hmm… thank you for the information; I might do it (laughs)”.
An annual candidate for participation in the Eurovision – the “Dali” band that even tried to get to the contest in a selection tour in the neighboring Poland - have refused from the idea this year:

Dali: “We haven’t thought about it this time. No, we won’t do it!”
“Litesound” – a band that has taken part in many Eurovision selection tours participated in “Musical Court” with a song written by a famous composer Valery Halauko last year. According to the band’s leader Zmitser Kun, the composer has applied for the song’s participation in the contest:
Zmitser Kun: “Valery Halauko has applied for participation of this song performed by us”.

A national favorite Alyaksandr Saladuha is not going to take part in the Eurovision, he says he has a lot of things to do now:

Alyaksandr Saladuha: “We will see. I’m not going to do it now. I have a lot of work, plans and so on”.

Let us remind you that the Belarusian participant will have to perform in the first semi-final of the Eurovision on May 25.