The Slovenia Times

Plan B for Athens

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The Slovenian Eurovision song contest "EMA 2006" has finally been brought to a successful conclusion after the original 107 entrants where whittled away to just 14 performers who competed in the final. Although EMA has been plagued by scandal and controversy, mostly because of the voting systems, the public were once again glued to their TV screens to watch the final contest. According to AGB Nielsen Media Research data, 525,200 people or 61% of the total TV audience above the age of 4 watched the event. However, once again the people's favourite missed out. This year the winner was jointly chosen by the TV audience, who accounted for two-thirds of the votes, and a professional panel that assigned the other third. The destiny of the competitors was pretty much in the hands of the audience, or so they thought. "I didn't think I had a chance" By the close of the voting, Sasa Lendero and her song "Mandoline" was clearly the public's preference having accumulated 11,567 mobile phone votes and 11,164 from stationary phones. Atomik Harmonik and their "Polkaholik" were running second ahead of Rebeka Dremelj and Domen Kumer. All that remained was for the votes of the professional jury to be assigned. And lo and behold, they had seen things completely differently! Not only did they assign most of their votes (converted into 12 points) to the stylishly changed Anzej Dezan for his "Plan B" (composed by Matjaz Vlasic, Ursa Vlasic and Bostjan Grabnar), they assigned absolutely nothing to Sasa Lendero, which in the end saw her ousted from first place. The young singer later said in an interview for national television that he was "in shock" after seeing the final result. Anzej Dezan is a singer with a remarkable voice, who shot to fame after competing in the "Battle of the Talents 2004" on national television, where he finished second to last year's EMA contest winner, Omar Naber. Appearing in the final of the EMA contest usually results in more bookings and greater appearance fees for most of the contestants. Therefore, the financial aspects alone would act as a lure for many of the young artists. The Master Plan Slovene was first heard in the Eurovision contest in 1966, courtesy of Berta Ambroz and her song "Brez besed" (Without words), who finished a creditable seventh. That marked the beginning of a rich history of Slovenians appearing in this famous, some say infamous, international contest. However, victory has proved elusive, although the Slovenian group Pepel in kri tasted success when they accompanied Toto Cutugno in his victorious "Insieme" in 1992. A year later, the 1X band became the first representatives of independent Slovenia at the song contest. It is now 40 years since our first appearance. Could this be our year? Well, 'plan A' calls for Anzej to get past the semifinal stage on 18th May and into the final two days later where he'll unleash Plan B. He promises his performance will be "explosive, characteristic, passionate, Slovene"; hopefully there'll be no need for a 'plan C'.

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