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Over 1/4 countries in ESC action!
Introducing: Eurovision Super Saturday
Slovenia, Malta, Poland and Estonia will provide the thriving Eurovision Song Contest community with the latest round of songs to be confirmed for Helsinki, all four winning entries will take their place in the line-up for the Eurovision Song contest semi-final on 10th May. Lithuania and Finland continue their round selection process whilst Bulgaria, Iceland, Norway, Latvia, Romania and Spain complete the showcasing of their entries before moving to the final stages. Add Sweden's award winning Melodifestivalen to the mix as the most popular national final of them all kicks off and you have 13 countries providing enough entertainment to last a month!
With so many competing shows, different selection procedures and musical tastes and styles, we're taking a quick preview of what Super Saturday has to offer!
Lithuania have joined Spain in going for an unorthodox approach this year. The second of three quarter finals were supposed to take place for newcomers, semi-established and established perfomers respectively. Since two of the singers who would have competed in the "red" group have withdrawn, the songs of the third heat are directly qualified for the semi finals. Furthermore, the Litunianian broadcaster has also commissioned two entries to be directly qualified for the final. The voting is a mixture of televoting (50%) and a jury (50%). Got it? We're not sure we have either, but all should become clear by the weekend!
Week three in Finland sees another three acts peform two songs, before they all move forwards to the final with the more popular as decided by the public and their communications tools. Iceland hold their third and final semi final sending the last three songs to the final final to be held on February 17th.
Slovenia and Malta are yet to start their semi finals, but by Saturday night, both will be ready. Malta will present 14 songs on Thursday night with six proceding to the new and improved Malta Song for Europe festival where the public will select the Island's latest entry. Slovenia will start their final with 14 songs, and ending with a straight televote-off between the top two at the end of the first voting period.
Thank heavens for Poland, who are holding a straight final with ten songs and no complications, a nice simple televote will determine the winner, except the televote will be divided into regions which caused a slight problem last year... (in Cyprus).
And in Sweden, we begin the Road to Globen with the first eight acts bidding to follow Carola to the Eurovision Song Contest. This is all straight forwards until the second chance round 'face-off', with the top two moving directly to the final and the next two highest placed songs taking their place in the battle royale on the 3rd March.
HAVE YOUR SAY
So, as we prepare the countdown to Super Saturday, we ask you: Are there too many shows on one day, and are the selection procedures getting to complicated?
Even the most dedicated Eurovision Song Contest fans will struggle to watch all the finals on Saturday night, or for that matter by Sunday night even if they are all available to watch online for the rest of the weekend. Do you find the selection procedures are getting too complicated? Have your say in the reactions section below.
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Go directly to the reactions
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Reactions
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My top songs:
1.SLOVENIA
2.MALTA
3.FINLAND
4.IRELAND
5.DANMARK
6.NORWAY
7.CYPRUS
8.MACEDONIA
9.SPAIN
10.MONTENEGRO
11.THE NETHERLANDS
12.LITHUANIA
13.BELGIUM
14.ROMANIA
15.SWITZERLAND
16.BELARUS
17.POLAND
18.BULGARIA
19.ICELAND
20.ISRAEL
21.MOLDOVA
22.ALBANIA
23.ESTONIA
24.ARMENIA
25.TURKEY
GooD luck for LITHUANIA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
VILNIUS 2008
Tommy Nilsson : at last a singer !
Andreas was amazing 
I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for him
Addis Black Widow is so out of tune that it hurts my ears. What's going on with this first semi in Sweden. It doesn't sound like MF to me. Where is all the schlager?
The Widow is totally out of tune !
SOFIA BEST IN SWEDISH SEMIFINAL 1 !!!
GOOD LUCK SOFIA !!!
Melodifestivalen has begun with a webcast!!! I can't believe it. So far Anna Book is my favourite.
Melodifestivalen rocks...and YES there's a webcast!!!!!!!!!!!!yupi
Three QUARTER-finals in Lithuania, eh? That's a new one. Even worse than referring to every heat or qualifying round as a 'semi-final'. There are still FOUR quarters in a whole. I checked. I think you mean 'three heats'.
woohoo!! Here we go again!
Hola!!! My favourite is "sunflower" go to ESC!!
Ohh the eurovision madness shall begin... I can't wait for Saturday! I hope Laura, Vanilla Ninja or Ines will win (maybe even Linda if she can carry out the live performance well enough). I will be at our national TV station during the rehearsals on Saturday.. It's kind of a tradition.
It is a shame I haven't heard any songs from other countries. Oh dear.
2 DAYS TO GO
I forgot to say that Poland also has very poor songs this year...
I really hope that Estonia will select "Romeo & Julia" and totally ignore the ultimate crap-kitsch-fossil song "Sunflowers".
"Romeo & Julia" will not only bring Estonia in the final, but also in top 5.
"Sunflowers" will not only leave Estonia in the semi, but also in bottom 5.
I hope that Malta selects "Vertigo". It is not perfect, but all the other songs are below average. "L-imhabba ghamja" is an average, boring song that makes me wanna sleep.
The icelandic songs of their 3rd semi are totally forgettable, I hope Jonsi will return to ESC to take a revenge for his average place in 2004.
The finnish songs from the 3rd semi are average. Kentala has awful songs. Katra for Finland!
The romanian songs of the 2nd semi are worse than the ones of the 1st one, except "well-o-wee" which is by far the worse (when did a country song do well in ESC anyway?) Locomondo for Romania!
I haven't listened to all bulgarian songs, but I prefer S-lavina for Bulgaria this year. The song of Charlene & Natasha is average, but anyway the bulgarian would never select a foreign duo to represent them, so the ladies are totally losing their time there.
I am very curious to listen to the melodifestivalen entries and I hope that we will have a deserved winner this year, the best one and not the most famous one (if the most famous has the best song then it's ok )
Spain should send either "I love you mi vida" or "Tu voz se apagara" (I slightly prefer the second one) and forget Rebeca, who can't sing nor dance live. Nazaret or Mirela for Spain!
I can't say anything about Latvia who has very poor songs (I only liked Re 
ublic, but even that is not enough to get them to the final)
Also curious about Slovenia and Lithuania...
Good luck to everyone and may the best songs win!!!
Eurolaul-Estonia-Sunflowers,Laura
Malta song for Europe-My love,Isabelle
Milan well charlotte did win..hahaha
Don't think much of it, sorry. Even more forgetable than Charlotte.
THERESE FT THE ATTIC FOR SWEDEN IN EUROVISION!!
here is therese 1999 MF performance who came second after charlotte perreli!!tell me what you think.
url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bkdtE_JtY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bkdtE_JtY/url]
Saturday afternoon is the repaly from denmarks 1st round.
Notice that few coutries will air a replay from saturday evening on sunday.
You can watch the romania semi during the night again on TVRi. Slovenia's Tv will retransmit in te morning, in the afternoon Estonia and Sweden and in the evening Norway. If you are able to receive the stations of course. Denmark will replay next saturday the 2nd round from friday.
Poland (TVP Polonia) will not replay their final, as well as Bulgaria (maybe i am wrong but could not find a replay).
I am desperately looking for info about Lithuania, since their second channel is FTA, but there is no replay indicated. LRT's website has a page with many contact persons, but they do not respond.
Hey aviva, I totally agree! lol.... I always like the songs that don't get picked!!!!!! LOL
Good luck to everyone on super saturday from the UK!!
Just imagine if Lithuamia were ever given the opportunity to stage the whole contest!!!!
Just imagine if all (42) countries used the same format as Lithuania? 
A whole weekend of non-stop ESC music. What else can an ESC fan ask for? My favourite songs each year usually come not from the selected songs, but from the ones that were not selected in each country. Most of the fun comes from predicting which songs will qualify in each country and then shaking your head when your favourites are not selected or celebrating when you think a country made a good choice.
I am hoping that all countries decide to have national selections so we have an even greater variety of songs, but please let's not have them so close together because the stress of trying to watch them at the same time is killing me! (especially since I can only watch webcasts).
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Great! Go on! It's never enough!
Seems like national finals are becoming more and more interesting though!
I remember a time when participating songs weren't allowed to be aired before one month before the ESC.......Has that rule been changed?
I think I'll watch the Maltese or Estonian selection - the best Icelandic song for me is clear (it's [i]Eldur[/i]) and Norway only disappointed me until now...
But it's a pity that these interesting selections in Malta, Estonia and also Poland will take place at nearly the same time...
TOO many shows? Stupid question. Different countries, no problem.
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