Belarus in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017

Belarus participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 with the song "Story of My Life" written by Arciom Lukjanienka. The song was performed by Naviband. The Belarusian entry for the 2017 contest in Kiev, Ukraine was selected through a national final organised by the Belarusian broadcaster National State Television and Radio Company of the Republic of Belarus (BTRC). The national final consisted of thirteen competing acts participating in a televised production where the winner was determined by a 50/50 combination of votes from jury members made up of music professionals and a public telephone vote. "Historyja majho žyccia" performed by NAVI was selected as the winner.[1] The song's title was later translated from Belarusian to English for the Eurovision Song Contest and was titled "Story of My Life".

Eurovision Song Contest 2017
Country	Belarus
National selection
Selection process	National Final
Selection date(s)	20 January 2017
Selected entrant	NAVI
Selected song	"Historyja majho žyccia"
Selected songwriter(s)	Arciom Lukjanienka
Finals performance
Semi-final result	Qualified (9th, 110 points)
Final result	17th, 83 points
Belarus in the Eurovision Song Contest
◄2016 • 2017 • 2018►

Background

Main article: Belarus in the Eurovision Song Contest

Prior to the 2017 Contest, Belarus had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest thirteen times since its first entry in 2004.[2] The nation's best placing in the contest was sixth, which it achieved in 2007 with the song "Work Your Magic" performed by Dmitry Koldun. Following the introduction of semi-finals for the 2004, Belarus had managed to qualify to the final four times. In 2016, Belarus failed to qualify to the final with the song "Help You Fly" performed by Alexander Ivanov.

The Belarusian national broadcaster, National State Television and Radio Company of the Republic of Belarus (BTRC), broadcasts the event within Belarus and organises the selection process for the nation's entry. The broadcaster has used both internal selections and national finals to select the Belarusian entry for Eurovision in the past. Since 2012, BTRC has organised a national final in order to choose Belarus' entry, a selection procedure that continued for their 2016 entry.[3]

Before Eurovision

National final

The Belarusian national final took place on 20 January 2017. Thirteen songs participated in the competition and the winner was selected through a jury and public televote. The show was broadcast on Belarus 1, Belarus 24 and Radius FM as well as online via the broadcaster's official website tvr.by.

Competing entries

Artists and composers were able to submit their applications and entries to the broadcaster between 4 and 24 November 2016. At the closing of the deadline, 67 entries were received by the broadcaster. Auditions were held on 30 November 2016 at the BTRC "600 Metrov" studio where a jury panel was tasked with selecting up to fifteen entries to proceed to the televised national final. The auditions were webcast online at the official BTRC website. Initially, thirteen acts proceeded to the Belarusian national final.

Final

The televised final took place on 20 January 2017 at the "600 Metrov" studio in Minsk, hosted by Olga Ryzhikova and 2014 Belarusian Eurovision contestant Teo.[1] The national final consisted of twelve competing acts participating in a televised production where the winner was determined by a 50/50 combination of votes from jury members made up of music professionals and a public telephone vote.

In addition to the performances from the competitors, the show featured guest performances by the hosts Olga Ryzhikova and Teo, 2015 Belarusian entrant Uzari and 2016 Belarusian entrant Ivan. "Historyja majho žyccia" performed by NAVI was selected as the winner.

Final – 20 January 2017
Draw	Artist	Song (English translation)	Composer(s)	Jury	Televote		Total	Place
1	July	"Children of the World"	Dmitry Fomich	1	7,078	8	9	7
2	Aleksandra Tkach	"Be Stronger"	Aleksandra Tkach	5	894	2	7	10
3	Vladislav Kurasov	"Follow the Play"	Vladislav Kurasov, Natalya Rostova	4	463	0	4	11
4	NAVI	"Historyja majho žyccia" (Story of my life)	Arciom Lukjanienka	12	3,626	6	18	1
5	Isaac Nightingale	"On the Red Line"	Vadim Kapustin	8	445	0	8	8
6	Kattie	"Wild Wind"	Anders Hansson, Sharon Vaughn	0	658	1	1	12
7	Nuteki	"Take My Heart"	Mikhail Nokarashvili, Dawn Michel	10	3,069	5	15	2
8	NAPOLI	"Let's Come Together"	Michael James Down, Primož Poglajen, Niklas Hast	2	7,271	10	12	5
9	Nikita Hodas	"Voices In My Head"	Nikita Hodas	7	1,117	3	10	6
10	Angelica Pushnova	"We Should Be Together"	Kirill Ermakov, Natalya Tambovtseva	3	1,278	4	7	9
11	Anastasiya Sheverenko	"We'll Be Together"	Maxim Aleynikov, Irina Filatova	6	5,361	7	13	3
12	Lermont x Julic	"Heartbeat"	Vasiliy Selischev, Anton Rubatskiy	0	202	0	0	13
13	PROvokatsiya	"#mylove"	Anatoliy Chepikov, Svyatoslav Pozdnyak, Ilya Yermak	0	9,238	12	12	4

At Eurovision

According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country and the "Big 5" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) are required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progress to the final. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) split up the competing countries into six different pots based on voting patterns from previous contests, with countries with favourable voting histories put into the same pot.[4] On 31 January 2017, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Belarus placed into the second semi-final, to be held on 11 May 2017, and was scheduled to perform in the second half of the show.[5]

Once all the competing songs for the 2017 contest had been released, the running order for the semi-finals was decided by the shows' producers rather than through another draw, so that similar songs were not placed next to each other. Originally, Belarus was set to perform in position 15, following the entry from Switzerland and before the entry from Bulgaria.[6] However, following Russia's withdrawal from the contest on 13 April and subsequent removal from the running order of the second semi-final, Belarus' performing position shifted to 14.[7]

Points awarded to Belarus (Semi-final 2)
Televote
12 points	10 points	8 points	7 points	6 points
Ukraine		Israel  Lithuania		Estonia
5 points	4 points	3 points	2 points	1 point
Bulgaria		Croatia  France  Netherlands	Hungary  Serbia	Austria  Ireland  Romania
Jury
12 points	10 points	8 points	7 points	6 points
Ukraine	France		Austria  Croatia  Malta
5 points	4 points	3 points	2 points	1 point
Israel		Hungary  Lithuania		Switzerland

Points awarded to Belarus (final)
Televote
12 points	10 points	8 points	7 points	6 points
		Ukraine		Georgia  Latvia
5 points	4 points	3 points	2 points	1 point
	Poland	Czech Republic	Estonia  Israel	Lithuania  Moldova
Jury
12 points	10 points	8 points	7 points	6 points
Azerbaijan  Ukraine			Austria
5 points	4 points	3 points	2 points	1 point
Croatia		Greece  Moldova	Bulgaria  Latvia  Malta	Israel  United Kingdom

Points awarded by Belarus

Semi-final 2 Score Televote Jury 12 points  Bulgaria  Bulgaria 10 points  Hungary  Norway 8 points  Estonia  Netherlands 7 points  Israel  Lithuania 6 points  Norway  Austria 5 points  Romania  Malta 4 points  Croatia  Serbia 3 points  Ireland  Croatia 2 points   Switzerland  Denmark 1 point  Lithuania  Estonia

Final Score Televote Jury 12 points  Bulgaria  Bulgaria 10 points  Moldova  Portugal 8 points  Hungary  Sweden 7 points  Portugal  Australia 6 points  Belgium  Norway 5 points  Norway  Netherlands 4 points  France  Austria 3 points  Sweden  Denmark 2 points  Romania  Poland 1 point  Ukraine  Israel

Split voting results from Belarus (Semi-final 2)
Draw	Country	Jury							Televote
		I. Mardusevich	L. Kuts	V. Aleshko	A. Gross	L. Shyrin	Average Rank	Points	Rank	Points
01	Serbia	6	8	6	8	10	7	4	17
02	Austria	5	4	4	5	5	5	6	11
03	Macedonia	14	17	17	16	16	16		12
04	Malta	7	7	7	7	6	6	5	16
05	Romania	17	14	15	15	14	15		6	5
06	Netherlands	3	3	1	4	4	3	8	13
07	Hungary	13	9	9	11	13	12		2	10
08	Denmark	10	6	10	10	12	9	2	14
09	Ireland	11	13	14	14	15	14		8	3
10	San Marino	16	16	16	17	17	17		15
11	Croatia	8	10	13	6	7	8	3	7	4
12	Norway	2	2	2	2	2	2	10	5	6
13	Switzerland	15	15	12	13	11	13		9	2
14	Belarus
15	Bulgaria	1	1	3	1	1	1	12	1	12
16	Lithuania	4	5	5	3	3	4	7	10	1
17	Estonia	9	12	8	12	9	10	1	3	8
18	Israel	12	11	11	9	8	11		4	7

Split voting results from Belarus (final)
Draw	Country	Jury							Televote
		I. Mardusevich	L. Kuts	V. Aleshko	A. Gross	L. Shyrin	Average Rank	Points	Rank	Points
01	Israel	11	13	11	14	15	10	1	16
02	Poland	9	11	25	8	9	9	2	17
03	Belarus
04	Austria	10	6	7	6	6	7	4	20
05	Armenia	17	14	6	19	10	13		15
06	Netherlands	4	7	4	7	7	6	5	22
07	Moldova	14	15	12	10	14	12		2	10
08	Hungary	15	23	13	18	19	19		3	8
09	Italy	13	16	24	11	12	16		12
10	Denmark	7	10	9	9	8	8	3	21
11	Portugal	2	1	5	2	1	2	10	4	7
12	Azerbaijan	18	8	16	12	11	11		11
13	Croatia	22	18	18	20	21	21		14
14	Australia	3	4	8	4	4	4	7	19
15	Greece	23	25	19	24	22	24		23
16	Spain	24	19	20	25	25	25		24
17	Norway	5	5	3	5	5	5	6	6	5
18	United Kingdom	25	21	21	22	23	23		18
19	Cyprus	20	12	10	13	16	14		13
20	Romania	12	24	22	16	17	20		9	2
21	Germany	21	20	23	23	24	22		25
22	Ukraine	19	22	14	17	13	18		10	1
23	Belgium	16	9	15	15	18	15		5	6
24	Sweden	6	3	2	1	2	3	8	8	3
25	Bulgaria	1	2	1	3	3	1	12	1	12
26	France	8	17	17	21	20	17		7	4

References

1. "Belarus: Eurovision 2017 national final January 20".
2. "Belarus Country Profile". EBU. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
3. Granger, Anthony (21 October 2015). "Belarus: 2016 singer to be selected by televote only". Eurovoix.com. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
4. Jordan, Paul (25 January 2017). "Semi-Final Allocation draw to take place in Kyiv". eurovision.tv. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
5. Jordan, Paul (31 January 2017). "Results of the Semi-Final Allocation Draw". eurovision.tv. European Broadcasting Union. Retrieved 31 January 2017.
6. Jordan, Paul (31 March 2017). "Semi-Final running order for Eurovision 2017 revealed". eurovision.tv. European Broadcasting Union. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
7. "EBU: "Russia no longer able to take part in Eurovision 2017"". eurovision.tv. European Broadcasting Union. 22 April 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2016.

External links

• Official BTRC Eurovision site