Only reaching the Eurovision final once, the pressure will be high for the one who represents the country in Lisbon, Portugal in May. After three years with internal selections, Czech Television decided to try something new, and they will let the public decide who should represent them.
The national selection will not be televised, but it will be online based. Unlike San Marino’s selection process, Czech broadcaster allowed only songs with Czech singers to be submitted. At the end of the submission period in November, there were approximately 400 songs submitted. The internal team of music supervisors lead by Jan Maxián again, chose the best songs out of the submitted entries. Recently, the broadcaster revealed how the selection process continues.
Czech national selection 2018
Only six lucky ones will have the opportunity to fight for the ticket to Lisbon. Those six are already chosen and they are recording presentation videos for the online national final. On 8th January 2018, Česká Televize will publish the list of artists and also their videos on their website. This will be available worldwide, but only people from the Czech Republic will be able to vote using the official Eurovision app. This voting will last for two weeks, and at the end of January, the broadcaster will reveal the results.
But it won’t be completely up to the Czech audience. There will be also an international jury involved for the very first time in the Czech selection process. The jury will make up 50 % of the results, while the other half will belong to the online voters. In the case of a tie, it is the people’s choice who decides the winner. The logo and name for the national selection should be revealed in the following weeks. Czech delegation plans to keep the logo and name for the future when the selection process may advance to a televised national final.
Who is taking part?
As EuroVisionary informed earlier in November, some artists already confirmed their participation in the selection, but it is top secret, who are the six lucky ones. Jakub Ondra revealed in one of the interviews that he is one of those who passed to the next phase of the selection and Mikolas Josef shared his excitement on his Instagram account with a comment “shooting time”. The executive producer Jan Potměšil also added few shoots of Mikolas from the session. Is Mikolas another finalist then?
We still have to wait until the 8th January to find out if it is true. Still, the end of January will be the earliest date when the Czech Republic know their representative and also their song for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. Usually, it was the beginning of March when Czech television published more information and the song though, in 2015, the duo Marta Jandová & Václav Noid Bárta were revealed at the end of the January. Their song was then released in March again.
The lucky representative next year will try to improve the score of the Czech Republic at Eurovision Song Contest. Last year, Martina Bárta finished 13th in the semifinal and failed to qualify for the Grand Final. Still, Gabriela Gunčíková is the only Czech representative to make it through.
In the video below, you can enjoy their 2017 entry in a special Multicam edition.
