escwebs - The Latest Eurovision News

On a quiet Eurovision news day like this, I decided to make some (more or less) interesting calculations and gathered them together here.

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42 countries are competing this year. It's the same number as in 2007 and 2009. The all-time record was seen in 2008 and 2011 when as many as 43 countries participated.

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16 is the age of the youngest contestant (Eva Boto, Slovenia) and 76 is the oldest (Engelbert Humperdinck, United Kingdom and Natalya Pugachyova, Russia).

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7 of this year's artists have been on the Eurovision stage before (Jónsi - Iceland 2004, Željko Joksimović - Serbia 2004 + host 2008, John and Edward from Jedward - Ireland 2011, Kaliopi - Macedonia 1996. Maya Sar - Bosnia & Herzegovina 2011 and Anri Jokhadze - Georgia 2008 were backing vocalists.)

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18 languages will be represented in this year's contest, including Spanish, Swedish, English, Albanian, French, Portuguese, Estonian, Croatian, Slovene, Serbian, Macedonian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Hebrew, Udmurt and Mühlviertlerisch, the Austrian dialect of German. Bulgarian Eurovision entry includes many other languages and if we count them, there are even 22 languages.

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Of this year's solo artists, 12 are male and 21 female. In addition, 4 duos and 5 groups are competing.

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3 hosts of the contest are Eldar, Leyla and Nargiz. 16,000 viewers will be able to attend each of the 3 Eurovision Song Contest live shows in May. A total of 7 hours of live show will be broadcasted across Europe between May 22 and 26.

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Time difference between Central Europe and Azerbaijan is +3 hours.

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A total of nearly 100 shows, including semifinals, finals, quarter finals, elimination rounds and song presentations were shown within 3 months when the entries for Baku were selected.

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This year's Eurovision is the 57th song contest. 20 competing countries are still patiently waiting for the day when they win the contest. 18 countries compete in each semifinal and 6 are automatically in the final. 10 most voted from each semifinal qualifies to the Grand Final.

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State budget of Azerbaijan will grant 50,000,000 AZN ( ~48 million € ) to organizing the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. The exact budget of the contest is, obviously, still unknown.

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And finally, the number we all keep on following - 21 days till the first semifinal!

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You have something to add? Did I make mistakes? Let me know below: