National final overload? Never!

I really like following Eurovision Song Contest related events at home in front of the computer or laptop. It's nice just to sit there very relaxed and follow great songs (or sometimes not so great ones!) on the big screen in front of you. Even better is taking the laptop with you to bed and watch it from there. But then you might be in danger of falling asleep if national finals don't reach your own quality levels. Anyway, no matter where you watch them, you should make sure you have some nice food and drinks near the screen. Nothing is more annoying than getting thirsty during the decisive part of a national final - and suddenly finding out that there's nothing in the fridge anymore!

But this coming Saturday, good food and drinks won't really help as there will be 8 national finals or semi-finals wanting to be followed. Thankfully, we're 4 editors (and the boss of course - hey Sietse!)  here at Eurovision.tv to cover all those events. We were very democratic though and divided all those 8 finals among us, so everyone will have two of them - so dear readers, you will have the results online just instants after they've finished! However, getting those results sometimes really requires some strong nerves. When the Hungarian final was on ten days ago, I had a friend watching it on satellite and reporting to me - but as he doesn't speak Hungarian, he could only guess what was going on. So sometimes - if you don't speak the language of the country - things can get very confusing! Very rarely, you don't even get a result at all! I remember that the during the Finnish final of 1996, the televote broke down and there was no winner given! And remember: not many people had internet then (yes, I know, a terrible thought!), so usually I had to wait till I got a bad VHS recording of the final. And if on that video-tape, there was no winner given, I was often short of throwing the tape out of the window!

If you choose to watch any national final on Saturday, don't forget that here at Eurovision.tv, several national finals will probably be streamed. It will be very interesting to see if we get our first turkey ever in the Eurovision Song Contest and if the Croats send a strong song to their neighbours in Belgrade... keep watching this space for more information!