France Televisions has announced that they will be returning to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest having only appeared once in the contest in 2004.
After two years of rumors of a French return to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, France Televisions has announced that they will be participating in Junior Eurovision 2018 in Minsk, Belarus. France previously only participated in the contest once in 2004 when Thomas Pontier finished 6th in Lillehammar.
Edoardo Grassi, the French Head of Delegation explained that;
We will solicit voice coaches, singing schools and launch an online form to designate internally our candidate.
With the Franc 2’s Head of Entertainment adding;
This initiative is part of our desire to offer on-air talent shows representative of what we want to do and that we do not see elsewhere and it contributes to the European dimension that we want to give our programs
France’s return to the competition comes just days after Wales revealed that they would be debuting the competition in Belarus this November. The broadcaster has launched their selection process.
The 2018 edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Minsk, Belarus after the country won the bidding process before the 2017 contest even began. Olga Salamankha explained that Belarus was selected as the host for next years contest over other bids due to their long-term commitment to the competition. Belarus is one of a handful of countries to consistently hold a televised selection process to select their participants. Furthermore, the stability of Belarus as a nation was cited as a factor.
Source: Sebastien Barke, 20minutes.fr
Yay! Bonjour, France! 😀 I wonder how the nation’s gonna select their comeback entry.
France 2 stated that the song will be selected internally for the Junior ESC. But for the ESC 2019, they will organize a national contest once again (Destination Eurovision 2019).
Yeah! thats amazing, that means that if all the other countries from 2017 compete we have 18, and Bulgaria wants to return as well so we may see 19 countries!
If Bulgaria returns, Cyprus will most likely withdraw because of the bad result in Tbilisi. 🙁 But it’d be great if Bulgaria travels to Belarus! 😀
After tonight i think cyprus keeps on participating in jesc, maybe FYR Macedonia withdraws idk. We will just wait and see.