Today, French broadcaster France 2 has given a small press conference to give some new information about the future French national selection for Eurovision 2018. While much is still “undecided”, we have a name and a host.
Destination Eurovision
The French national selection will be called Destination Eurovision (you surely don’t need a translation), and produced by ITV Studios France. While no actual dates have been given, it is assumed that it will be broadcast in January 2018. And like most national selections, it will be broadcast on several evenings.
15 or 16 candidates will compete, selected beforehand by members of France 2, of ITV Studios France and of the French Eurovision delegation. Artists can submit their songs between June 21st and November 30th, but this public submission concerns mostly new artists. Established singers can try their luck through their disc labels.
All must submit a song 70% in French, at least. If the winning song is fully in French, France 2 assure they will not add any lyrics in English (unlike what happened with Requiem, the French song for Eurovision 2017). The voting process has not been confirmed, but it will involve a French jury, an international jury, and televoting.
Garou hosting
I said yes immediately !
We were almost sure Garou would be hosting the contest, but now it is confirmed. He’s a Canadian singer born and raised in Québec, the main French-speaking province. Global star and Eurovision 1988 winner Céline Dion also comes from this province.
Garou is famous in France for his music, for his very hoarse voice, and for his participation, as a coach, in The Voice : La Plus Belle Voix. There, in 2014, he met Amir, who later represented France, though he wasn’t his coach.
As he got more and more famous at the beginning of the 2000’s, he sung a duo with fellow Quebecker Céline Dion, Sous le Vent, that reached the 1st place in French charts in 2001.
The things we don’t know…
The only thing we learned from the press conference was the name of the show. Before, it had been tagged “Mission Eurovision” when the first news came of the project, at the time of the Eurovision Song Contest in Ukraine, then as “Eurovision : Qui Portera Nos Couleurs ?” (Eurovision : Who Will Fly Our Flag ?) in the official rules for the public submission.
Every other piece of information was already known or almost known. The interesting thing is that the official press conference is actually vaguer than what we had learned until today. In September, an article from Ouest France talked of a three-show selection in January: two semi-finals recorded before broadcast, where candidates would be eliminated by a French jury. Only the finale would be live, and the winner selected by televote and international juries.
Those informations have not been confirmed yet by France 2, but they fit with the information given by the broadcaster today.
In any event, are you excited about Destination Eurovision ? What do you think of Garou ? Do you think this new project will give France a chance to grab the trophy 40 years after the last contest hosted in Paris ? Give us your thoughts on the comments below or on social media @escxtra !
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