The Romanian national broadcaster has stated that voting issues during the semi-final last night are the reason why The Humans failed to qualify for the final.
TVR, Romania’s national broadcaster has released a statement following the country failing to qualify for the Grand Final, for the first time since the semi-finals were introduced. The broadcaster states that televoting issues meant that the diaspora across Europe was unable to vote for Romania. According to TVR;
During the 15 minutes allocated to the voting session, many Romanians from abroad complained of technical failures to the telephone system. Messages, sent through social networks, came from countries with large Romanian communities, such as Germany and Italy, where telephone operators had issues with allowing people to vote our representatives (Romania) in the contest. Thus, in Italy, three of the national networks did not operate that night, and in Germany the subscribers of one of the major telephone operators were unable to send the votes.
The Humans stated after the semi-final that;
We believed in our chance until the end and we gave everything to Romania tonight. Unfortunately, the result was different from the one we expected, but we are happy to have represented the country on the Eurovision stage.
Founded in 2017, The Humans is a Romanian band from Bucharest. The group consists of Cristina Caramarcu (vocalist), Alexandru Cismaru (guitarist), Alexandru Matei (keyboardist), and Adi Tetrade (drummer). Although they are a new band, they rose to fame after winning this year’s Selectia Nationala, the Romanian Eurovision selection show. Their song “Goodbye” was written by Cristina herself and was composed and produced by band members Alexandru Matei and Alin Neagoe.
Source: Mediafax
Romania first participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994, the country had tried to participate in 1993 but failed to get through the pre-qualifying round. At the 1994 contest Dan Bittman finished 21st in the final scoring 14 points, Romania didn’t make it through to another final until 1998. Romania’s best results in the contest are two third place finishes. In 2005 Luminita Anghel & Sistem finished 3rd scoring 158 points, while Paula Seling & Ovi finished 3rd in Oslo with the song “Playing with Fire”. Romania missed the 2016 contest due to TVR being removed from the EBU.
TVR should start learning that to win or qualify, they need to do more for rest of the countries public to vote.
Relaying on diaspora only to vote and qyalify, was comfortable for them for many years. It’s time for the broadcaster to start really working and put efforts in organising and preparing this show.