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Saturday, January 14, 2012

ESC 2012: may we have the participants, please?

We are quite some time into January, and yet there is no officially confirmed list of participants for the 2012 Eurovision in Baku.

The situation is quite similar to Moscow 2009, when it took a long time to establish that very list. 2008 had been a harsh year for many broadcasters, Latvia and Lithuania wanted to pull out for financial reasons, Georgia wanted to pull out for political reasons. It was very much a mess for quite a long time.

The EBU negociated with all three and kept them in the running (even if Georgia would eventually give the whole event a miss anyway).

According to Eurovision Times, similar things go on right now behind the scenes. Seemingly, the big project at hand is "Save Poland" - an attempt to reverse the Polish withdrawal from the contest. There were also rumours about Romania possibly pulling out, later denied by TVR officials.

There have also been rumours about Moroccan broadcaster 2M seeking EBU membership, bringing Morocco back to the contest. According to Wikipedia, sources have quoted Morocco as "very likely" to return, while the EBU website says nothing about 2M being discussed as a potential member.

And Armenia, then? What has the EBU done to ensure Armenian participation? Is it acceptable if one paying member of the EBU has to refrain from participation on political grounds.

An official list of participants would be most welcome at this point, to end all this speculation.

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