Ukraine | Vidbir returns and will take place on February 23rd!
Ukrainian broadcasters UA:PBC and STB have today announced that they will be continuing on with their Eurovision partnership for at least another three years, which means that Vidbir will be 2wqreturning for Eurovision 2019 for a fourth year since it first started in 2016.
The show will be made up of 2 semi finals, due to be broadcast live on the 9th and 16th of February respectively, with the grand final taking place on February 23rd. Ruslan Kvinta will remain as the producer of the show whilst Ukrainian television presenter and actor Sergey Pritula will be hosting.
Vladimir Borodyanskiy, who is the head of STB, had this to say:
"Three years ago we started our cooperation with NTU, and the STB channel set itself the goal of creating a mega-show. And we succeeded, because in three years the stage of the national selection has showed a lot of new names to the public, gave a successful start to many young artists, and the selection itself became the main musical event of the year. It attracted the attention of successful producers and sponsors. This is a very decent result we are proud of. Therefore, we want to continue our cooperation with NTU, focusing on production and creating what STB can do best – large-scale television events, which is now our national selection for Eurovision".
The road to Vidbir 2019 has not been an easy one though as just over one year ago, the Ukrainian broadcaster UA:PBC announced that they were in financial difficulties due to under-funding from the government, which in turn meant that they were in severe debt to the government. However, this all seems to have been resolved now with the announcement of Vidbir 2019.
Like the previous three editions of Vidbir, it will be STB that will cover the costs of the organisation and broadcasting of the shows, as well as providing financial support to the winner, with regards to preparations for Eurovision and travel costs.
The head of UA:PBC went on to say:
"Taking into account the experience of previous years, we are happy to continue our cooperation with STB, as they are confident that Ukraine will be represented in the best way. Young artists will receive a rating platform, spectators will be satisfied with high-quality shows, and voting for a representative of Ukraine will be honest and open. The youngest European public broadcaster that is in a state of transformation and under conditions of 50% under-funding, but we believe that our cooperation with the commercial channel of the Eurovision project is economically feasible. On our own, we can not provide such a high quality national selection as STB can".
So, are you as excited as we are to see Vidbir return for Eurovision next year? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
