Russian singer Dima Bilan has won the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade.

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Stoyan Royanov was disqualified from EuroBGvision 2008. His song Sombrero had been performed last summer on BUlgarian TV in June. According to the rules of Eurovision Song Contest, a participating song publycaly broadcasted before 1st October can not participate.

Svetlozar Hristov and Vladimir Dimov with their song Tired soul will take his place. With the replacement and the three wild cards, te line-up for the final on February 23rd looks like:
Simona Sivanio - “Obeshtay mi ”
Nikolai Manolov - “Po-dobre”
Dani Milev - “Svetlinata i mraka”
Ivailo Kolev - “Should’ve been the one”
Te & Preslava Peycheva - “Taci vezer”
Ivan & Stani - “You are magic”
Deep Zone & Balthazar -” DJ, take me away”
Svetlozar Hristov and Vladimir Dimov- “Tired soul”
Generation - “Running scared”
Georgi Hristov & Gianni Fiorelino -”Sogno”
Nevena Tsoneva- “Ne izchezvai”
Desi Dobreva - “Strong”

As the winner from Eurovision in Helsinki became Serbia, planning is already underway to satisfy the European Broadcasting Union that RTS can host the 2008 contest. In the next two weeks a committee will be formed.Already one venue is being tipped as a likely choice for the show.

The Belgrade Arena opened in 2004 and is currently the largest undercover hall in Europe. It can hold up to 23,000 people, though the configuration for Eurovision is likely to mean slightly fewer tickets than that will be on sale. Already the director of the arena has said he would welcome the event if chosen as the host venue.

RTS director Alexandar Tijanic voiced concerns however about the needs for financial help from both the Serbian government and the city of Belgrade. The TV signal produced by RTS is not yet High Definition (HD) and so investment must be made into the Tv infrastructure to ensure this is upgraded before the contest takes place next year.The main issue is the lack of high quality hotel rooms. Belgrade needs to invest heavily to improve its hotel capacity to be able to play host to the participants and journalists.

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The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual contest organised by the state run TV stations of European nations to find the best new popular song.

The competition is restricted to members of the EBU - hence the presence of Israel and other countries not generally found on a map of Europe. And because there are more countries than slots available at the song contest, there’s an elimination procedure, based around how well you’ve done over the last few years. Unless you happen to be one of the EBU’s big four contributors - the UK, Germany, France, and Spain - in which case, you qualify automatically.

Eurovision is the name given to a network of communication channels - founded in the 1950s - that links state TV stations across Europe. The system minimizes the cost to each member of transmitting pan-European news and sports footage. In an effort to scare up programming to justify the network, members thought up the Song Contest and the first was held in Switzerland in 1956.

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