Beovizija 2009

Beovizija 2009
Semi-final(s)	7 March 2009
Final	8 March 2009
Presenter(s)	Jovana Janković Milena Vasić Srđan Timarov[1]
Broadcaster	RTS
Venue	Sava Centar, Belgrade, Serbia
Winning song	"Cipela" by Marko Kon & Milan Nikolić
Voting system
50% jury and 50% televoting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 points awarded to 10 favourite songs
Number of entries	20 (semi-final), 11 (final)
Interval act	Semi-finals: Performances by Regina, Igor Cukrov, Andrea Demirović, Next Time and Quartissimo Serbian music industry awards Final: Performance by Bo'az Ma'uda, Sirusho and Jelena Tomašević
Beovizija
◄2008        2010►

Beovizija 2009 (Беовизија 2009) was the 7th Beovizija music festival, Serbian selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. The semi-finals were held on March 7, 2009 while the finals were held a day later on March 8. The winners of this Beovizija were Marko Kon and Milan Nikolić with the song "Cipela", and they will represent Serbia in the second semi-final of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest on May 14, 2009, at the Olympic Indoor Arena in Moscow, Russia.

Format

The same format set by Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in Beovizija 2008 took place in 2009. The deadline for the submission of songs by artist to the national broadcaster was on January 27, 2009. One of the requirements for entry was that the songs must be performed in Serbian, however, the winning song can be sung in any language at Eurovision. The only main difference to last year's Beovizija was that the winners (both the artists and composers) also received a cash prize.^[2]

On January 30, 2009, 20 semi-finalists were selected by a group of RTS judges: Jelena Ilić, Ana Milićević and Jelena Vlahović. The final of Beovizija 2009 was held on March 8, 2009 at the Sava Centar in Belgrade. The winner of Beovizija 2009, selected through a 50/50 split of jury and televoting.^[2]

Stage

Beovizija is known to have one of the best stage designs in the national selection process for Eurovision^{[citation needed]}. This year the stage will symbolise the technological advances in television in the past 50 years in Serbia. This is why a large number of television and LCD display screens is being used. The stage has settings for all new electronic possibilities. The theme of the two nights is largely based around the music from popular local television shows in the past 50 years. The semi-final was based around popular shows produced since the 1970s to the end of the 1990s while the final will be centred around new popular television shows aired on RTS. The stage design was revealed to the public on February 25, 2009.

The stage has also been designed in a way to give a more fulfilling HD experience as it will be the first time Beovizija will be aired in high definition.

Host team

On February 27, 2009, RTS publicly announced the host couple of Beovizija 2009. It will consist of three people; the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest host Jovana Janković together with actors Milena Vasić and Srđan Timarov who will entertain the audience through song and dance. This marks the return of a 3-part host team for the first time since 2003.^[3]

Jury

In Beovizija the jury has 50% of the vote which is combined with the audience televote. Each person from the three member jury ranks the songs they liked from one to twelve (with the exception of nine and eleven points). Once this is done the votes from the jury are added up and a final score card from one to twelve is produced.

In the semi-final, the three-member jury was

• Jelena Jovičić, actress
• Jovan Maljoković, musician and composer
• Ivan Ivačković, rock critic

In the final, the jury was

• Željko Joksimović, singer and winner of Evropesma 2004
• Kornelije Kovač, musician and composer
• Biljana Krstić, musician

Interval acts

The 2009 Beovizija semi-finals interval act will include singers Andrea Demirović representing Montenegro, Quartissimo representing Slovenia, Igor Cukrov representing Croatia, Next Time representing Macedonia, and Regina representing Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the finals interval act the Serbian music industry awards were handed out. Also performing in the interval on the final night will be the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 representatives from Armenia (Sirusho), Israel (Bo'az Ma'uda) and Serbia (Jelena Tomašević). Together they sang "Time to pray", composed by Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres.^[4]

Participants and results

Semi-final

The semi-final of Beovizija 2009 was held on March 7, 2009 at the Sava Centar in Belgrade starting at 21:00 (CET). Twenty songs competed, with the top 10 songs progressing to the final on 8 March. The draw for the running order of the contest was held on February 26, 2009, which was drawn by last year's Beovizija winner and Serbian Eurovision entry for 2008 Jelena Tomašević.^[5]

The semi-final was broadcast live on RTS1 in Serbia, RTS Sat and rts.rs (internet) in Europe and beyond, RTRS in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on Radio Belgrade.

A few hours before the final, RTS published on their website that the televoting results used to determine the qualifiers were taken from only the first five minutes of the ten-minute televoting period.^[6] Had the full ten minutes' worth of televotes been used to determine the scores, Ana Nikolić and Ivana Selakov would have qualified for the final in the places of Etar and Sonja Bakić. RTS reinstated both Nikolić and Selakov, raising the total number of finalists from 10 to 12. Nikolić declined to participate, however, so 11 participants competed in the final.^[7] The performances highlighted below in orange were announced as finalists during the broadcast of the semi-final. The performances highlighted in red were progressed to the final to correct the error in counting the televotes. In the case of a tie, the performance ranked higher by the jury was given the higher placing.

Final

The following are songs that have qualified to the final night, held on March 8, 2009 in Sava Centar, aired at 21.00CET on RTS1, RTS SAT, RTRS, rts.rs and Radio Belgrade.^[7] Blagoslov za kraj won the televote by a landslide, taking in more votes than all ten remaining entries combined. The song received only five points from the jury however, allowing Ciplela, which the jury ranked first, to win. This marked the first time in Beovizija history that the televoters' favourite was not the overall winner.

See also

• Serbia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009

References

External links

• RTS
• RTS Eurovision page