Eurovision Dance Contest - Glasgow 2008

Following countries do Junior this year, to be held on 22nd of November in Cyprus:
Armenia (ARM TV), Azerbaijan (Ictimai TV), Belarus (First Channel), Belgium (VRT), Bulgaria (BNT), Cyprus (RIK), FYR Macedonia (MKTV), Georgia (GPB), Greece (ERT), Lithuania (LRT), Malta (PBS), The Netherlands (AVRO), Romania (TVR), Russia (RTR), Serbia (RTS), Ukraine (First).

Yep - the more I think about it - the Strictly/Dancing with the Stars link may be a red herring.



Yeah - think it is likely that many EBU members who do a Strictly Clone will be first to sign up - but I don't think it will be a requirement?

Yep - I think the main Nordic PSBs pulled out as they felt it was not healthy for kids to compete at that age - even though they don't have the pressure of hosting being dependent on winning?

It has just never really grabbed the imagination has it? I found the first one unwatchable - and haven't bothered since.

It is not requirement.
For example, YLE Finland, TVP Poland, NTU Ukraine do not have own Dancing With Stars, they have either reached an agreement with channels which licensed Dancing WIth Stars in their countries, like YLE and MTV3, or have approached couples from rival channels' show directly like TVP and TVN, NTU and 1+1.

Channel One Russia and TROS Netherlands have no dancing show either, they approached professional dancers from rival channels RTR and RTL and added own celebrities.

Denmark has got different couple, none participatnts of the show on the rival channel.

Lithuania, Ireland and Austria in addition to Dancing With Stars have run separate Eurovision Dance preselection

Greece took all professional couple from own country version of So You Think You Can Dance (they were judges there) and Azerbaijan took just the best professional couple in the country. This two countries were clearly breaching EDC rules, but organizers have allowed them to compete anyway.

Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland produce now own contest, called Melody Grand Prix Junior. It existed prior to Junior Eurovision and actually influenced it's creation. They took part in JESC for couple of years, but then decided to revive own separate contest.

Yep - isn't the Nordic one a bit less "competitive" - albeit difficult in a competition format? The Nordic countries co-operate quite a lot more with programming don't they? ISTR that their is a pan-Nordic Eurovision preview show as well?

I think MGP Nordic is just as, if not more competitive than the JESC. They have to qualify to get to the final 4 or 5 in the one show. So they have to go through the embarrassment of being told by the Nordic public that they're not good enough to make it to the next round. The voting's different because they divide 10,000 points up between the contestants after the televoting in terms of how many votes they got. eg, 5643 points if one of them got more than half the vote. I suppose the idea of being closer to home is what makes it less stressful.

The Nordic broadcasters are very close. There is a pan Nordic weekly news broadcast between SVT, NRK, YLE, DR and possibly RÚV that is subtitled in each country. I'm not sure if they take turns to host the show each week.

As for the Nordic ESC preview show, I know there was one in 2007 but I don't remember hearing anything about one this year.

Well I watched the Eurovision Dance Contest last Saturday. Despite having been a keen fan of the Eurovision Song Contest for several years, and thoroughly enjoyed this year's Eurovision Song Contest at Belgrade in May, I was disappointed with the Eurovision Dance Contest.

The UK finished 9th out of 14. At least we had marks from several countries, even though some were just 1s, and 9th was better than outright last (NOT joint last) as was our fate in this year's Eurovision Song Contest.

I think I can safely say that even the keenest Eurovision Song Contest fanatics will find it difficult to get worked up over the Eurovision Dance Contest. Does anyone else agree with me on that?

Given time and some further polishing it 'has wheels' as a format. The dance routines have to be longer though, trying to judge on the short segment performed last saturday really wasn't fair.

Really, it might as well be SOPOT and the Balkans with a few western countries starring alongside them?

I agree, but dancing shows have different audience in general, so EDC can become popular if organizers turn their promotion not to ESC fans, but to fans of dancing shows and dance sports in general. It is useless to try to built EDC audience on those who watch ESC.

It also alienates a hell of a lot of people, anyone can warble along to abba, thats why countries in the ESC make catchy songs people can listen along to for a few seconds and know the gist of it, dancing is a different ball-game, no ordinary person could recreate that, it take a lot of the joy out of it.