Czech Republic: CT opts for an online selection instead of a televised national final for Eurovision 2020
The Czech national broadcaster, announced today that it has decided to determine it Eurovision 2020 representative through an online selection skipping initial plans for a televised national final.
Although the Czech national broadcaster, CT, had expressed initially its intention to hold a televised national final, to take place 25 January at the Forum Karlin in Prague, eventually this won’t be the case for this year’s national selection. The country has decided to switch back to an online selection for Eurovision 2020.
Through an official announcement on its official Eurovision Facebook Page CT cleared out that the national final will not be a televised show. Namely the broadcaster mentioned:
After a few weeks of long and very heavy decision-making, we have decided, due to many circumstances, to postpone the televised national selection for a year (maybe for the following year!). We wanted to do something really different and this year we felt it would just not work, so we decided not to do it.
We return to the online format selection from the past two years. But don’t worry, we’re doing max to make the upcoming online national selection more interesting, so follow our social media channels for more information.
Following this change of plans, the Czech broadcaster has developed a new ESC 2020 national selection plan which will unfold as following :
- 06/01/2020: Press Conference during which competing acts will be unveiled
- 13/01/2020 : Release of Competing songs – Online voting opens
- 26/01/2020: Online voting closes
The Eurovision story so far
Czech Republic appeared for the first time in the Contest in 2007 with Kabat. A a row of disappointing results the country withdrew in 2010 and didn’t return until 2016. In 2016 its returned was followed by a grand final qualification for the first time . The best result came for the country in 2018 with Mikolas Josef who achieved a 6th placing in the Lisbon with his song και Lie to me.
This year, Lake Malawi represented the country and finished 11th in the final . This was the country’s third qualification to the final . The outstanding element was the gap between the jury voting that placed the group 8th with 150 points while the public vote placed the Czech at the 24th place.
