The broadcaster responsible for the French participation for the Eurovision Song Contest, France 2 has announced that they will air a national final to select their entrant who will fly the famous red, white and blue tricalore at the 2021 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. The contest is due to take part in the Dutch city of Rotterdam after Duncan Laurence won the 2019 edition of the contest with the song “Arcade”.
The 2020 edition was expected to have taken place this May, but due to the Covid_19 pandemic, the contest was cancelled. Meaning that the contest did not take part for the first time since it’s inception in 1956.
What was stated by France 2?
In an interview with Benjamin Meffre of French media outlet ozap, the head of France 2 entertainment and nore impotantly in context of this piece the Head of Delegation for France – Alexandra Redde-Amiel gave some more context as to what to expect with the upcoming national final. Ita also comes with a brand new title, so it’s out with “Destination Eurovision” and n with “Eurovision France, c’est vous qui décidez” (Eurovision France: It’s you who decides). She had this to say.
It will be a big prime time evening event produced by France TV Studio. The idea is to showcase Eurovision that evening. We will shoot this one off show in a regional studio and the evening will be presented by Stéphane Bern, commentator for France in Eurovision.
This is not the first case of the title of “You Decide” or a variant of it being used to name a national final. The BBC used “You Decide” between 2016-2019 and SBS used “Australia Decides” in 2019 and 2020 before internally selecting Montaigne who won in 2020 for 2021.
Why not Tom Leeb?
As it has been reported that Tom Leeb, who was supposed to represent France in Rotterdam for the 2020 edition did not get automatic right to represent France unlike some of the other internally selected acts like Efendi for Azerbaijan. Alexandra had this to say on the issue.
You have to put it into context. Tom Leeb had been internally selected. The Covid arrived and the Eurovision was canceled. Eurovision is one of our strongest brands. We couldn’t let our audience wait more than a year without it. We talked about it with Tom and we decided to gather the public again around this event by creating our national final.
Are you looking forward to the new national final for France in 2021? Who would you like see competing? Let us know in the comments below or get in touch with us @escxtra on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Also you can subscribe to us on YouTube and also you can follow us on Spotify.
