Junior Eurovision: Information revealed during the Head of Delegation meeting!

Today, the Head of Delegations meeting has taken place in Malta and a lot of information about the upcoming Junior Eurovision edition has been revealed, ESC+Plus presents you a summary below:

• 16 countries will take part in Malta!
• The stage design has been presented this morning, click here.
• Accreditation centre opens at 08:30 on 7 November – you can pick up your badges from then on!
• Press centre will be located in a separate tent next to the venue, covering 900m2 with easy access to the arena.
• Free use of Malta public transport for all accreditation holders on Malta & Gozo!
• Accredited media will be able to sign up at the JESC Press Centre to join the sightseeing/cultural tours and school visits with the contestants.http://www.visitmalta.com/
• Over 100 volunteers will be part of this year’s organisation.
• Volunteers include students who will film excursions/interviews & make them available to press to download.
• Malta will allocate a school class for each participant. The participant(s) will visit their specially-designated school & be part of fun/cultural excursions. The schools will then be that participant’s official cheer squad.
• Postcards are very cool – historic backgrounds, modern sports/dance/music. Extreme sports mixed with traditional elements… “break dancing in the President’s palace” as one example!
• All of the music for this year’s contest is being composed especially. There will be a very catchy common song called “Together”.
• Numerous interval acts will take place during the show: dancers, neon lights shows, moving screens, rapping, and dub step!
• First rehearsals start at 10am on Monday 10th November while the postcard filming starts at midday.
• The show will have a duration of 2 hours and a half long to accommodate the 16 participating countries.

GALLERY:

Running Order

The rules for Junior Eurovision 2014 state that the running order would be decided by a random draw. Host broadcaster PBS and the production team requested permission to change this rule, and revered to a producer-led draw. This was agreed to by all of the delegations taking part in the meeting, in order to create a better flow to the show – and avoid similar songs taking to the stage one after another.

The running order will therefore be formed as follows during the Welcome Reception (on Sunday 9 November):

• Malta randomly picks its position
• The countries in positions #1 and #16 are picked at random
• The remaining 13 countries choose either ‘First Half’ or ‘Second Half’ at random
• PBS presents the running order, approved by the Executive Supervisor and Steering Group, at the end of the Welcome Reception.

Rehearsal schedule

For the first time, the countries will not rehearse in running order. This is to allow for scheduling of the school visits and social trips for individual delegations, as it would be impossible to organise visiting a school the next day if the running order is only known on Sunday evening. The rehearsal schedule (Monday-Thursday) will therefore run with a pre-determined order, which is irrelevant of the running order for the live show. The songs will perform in their actual running order for the first time on Friday during the dress rehearsals.

This will not, in any way, influence the running order.

Voting

Junior Eurovision will revert to the ‘Top 10’ voting system, used previously in both the Junior and adult Eurovision Song Contests prior to 2013. This means that the jury will award points 1-8, 10 & 12 to the songs, whilst the televoting will also do the same. Neither the televoting, nor the jurors, will rank the songs from 1-16.

The tie-break procedure for determining the winner does not change.

Spokespersons will only announce points 8, 10 and 12 on stage. Points 1-7 will appear automatically on the scoreboard – this is to ensure that the show does not over-run.

 

Today’s Heads of Delegation meeting marks the deadline upon which countries must submit their Junior Eurovision 2014 entries, lyrics, and audio files. Some countries have requested that these do not appear on JuniorEurovision.tv straight away, as they will be presented nationally first very soon.

For the first time, there was held a Skype call with the Head of Delegations that couldn’t be in Malta.