After winning back-to-back Junior Eurovision titles, should Poland be allowed to host JESC again? Jacek Kurski, the chairman of Polish Television (TVP), reveals Poland’s plans for 2020. He also shares his ideas on how Poland’s Eurovision selection process can learn from the Polish Junior Eurovision successes.
TVP Chairman Jacek Kurski spoke with the news portal Wirtualna Polska recently about the past, present and future of Polish Television — including things Eurovision related. He spoke about how Poland’s Eurovision selection efforts can take inspiration from its Junior Eurovision formula for success. He also revealed if he thinks Poland will host Junior Eurovision 2020.
Can Poland use its Junior Eurovision success to boost its Eurovision efforts?
With the selection process for Junior Eurovision clearly working, Jacek was asked was why Poland is not as successful in the adult contest compared to the Junior version?
He said that TVP had created the perfect conditions for fostering their Junior Eurovision acts, with two shows. The first is The Voice Kids Poland — the show that gave us both Roksana Węgiel and Viki. The second is the new national final for JESC, Szansa na sukces.
Kurski explained that “This program gave them training in the form of eight to nine weekly performances. Professional, full tension. Practice makes perfect. The competition builds artistic and stage characters.”
But what works for Junior Eurovision doesn’t work for its May counterpart. And it’s down to the problem many countries have faced: when established artists don’t want to take a chance on a national final.
But Kurski notes that TVP has “created extremely positive and equal opportunities to select the best talents.” He also says that there’s no shortage of talents in Poland. His dream for the future is to use a JESC-style of selection process for Poland’s ESC entry.
Poland enjoyed aa successful run of qualifications after its 2014 Eurovision comeback. However, in the past two years, Poland has not qualified for the Eurovision grand final. Most recently, Tulia narrowly missed out on qualifying in Tel Aviv by just two points.
Perhaps with the successes of Roksana and Viki, the prize of the version of The Voice Poland may someday soon be a ticket to Eurovision?
Will Poland host Junior Eurovision 2020?
In Junior Eurovision, the hosting the next contest doesn’t automatically go to the winning country. Instead, interested cities put in a bid for the EBU to consider. So the big question is — is Poland looking to host Eurovision 2020 for the second time in a row?
Kurski confirmed that Poland is putting in a bid to host the 2020 contest. But he’s realistic about Poland’s chances of being picked for a second year.
He explained: “If Poland would win Eurovision for the third time in a row, this competition will become such a traditional, private property of Poland and may discourage other countries. The European Broadcasting Union must ensure that everyone in this organisation feels equal. It could be a problem for the EBU. We will try, but we will understand if the [hosting bid] answer is negative.”
But regardless of who hosts Eurovision 2020, it won’t take away Poland’s achievement of winning the Junior contest two years in a row — something that has never happened before at Junior Eurovision.
What do you think? Should Poland have more of a talent show-style competition to determine who goes to Rotterdam? And should Poland be allowed to host JESC for a second time? Let us know in the comments below!
I agree that the voting system is not fair and should be changed. However: 1. Every country could vote for itself and I’m sure everyone did it (in general). I know that smaller countries have less chance of winning at the start, but this is not the only issue. Otherwise Russia would win every year because it is the biggest country. The popularity of the competition is also an important thing. 2. TVP did its best to promote the contest in media (probably for the first time in history, because they usually don’t care about it at all). They even… Read more »
Just to be clear, Poland won in a contest where the audience was allowed to VOTE FOR YOUR OWN COUNTRY. I mean, they were the hosts, obviously tgey had a bigger audience watching this show. JESC is not super popular anyway. Their win is a joke pretty much.
Polish bots are at it again. People got downvoted when they have anything to say about the voting system. Typical.
Just wait for my downvote. 3 2 1 GO.
Nah, you’ll get downvoted for saying literally anything else. Look bellow.
Jeez, did all of you have this same negetive Energy when Ireland won esc multiple times in a row? Two (2) wins in a row is not that weird. I doubt Poland will win again next year.
ireland won in the 100% jury vote era when english language songs were heavily favored, they fixed it by introducing the televote and then they fixed the televote’s flaws by re-introducing the jury. but anyway ireland never managed to vote for itself so it ain’t the same problem
So… yeah… Poland, I’m sorry to tell you but your JESC success comes from the onlive voting. Make the EBU allow voting for yourself in the adult Eurovision and you’ll see how your results improve.
And 2nd place in jury voting came from where?
TVP, buy the votes…
How do you buy votes from kids?
trash taste. nothing else can justify voting for that lifeless mess of a performance your homegirl gave
If other countries don’t want Poland to win again, they can rather stop whining and send THE BEST SONG of the contest, like Poland did this year. Superhero was the most contemporary and catchy song of the contest, and it would have won no matter which country sent it. And I like the idea of online voting, even if it means the country with the highest viewership winning the whole thing. The idea is to ‘please as many people as possible’ with the winning song. If the Poles make up the majority of viewers, it’s only logical to please them… Read more »
who’s gonna tell him ‘anyone i want rita ora to reject’ n ‘superhorror’ are subpar songs that would’ve ended 11th had they represented albania
u rihmember wrong. i was team france all the way
Polegend Godgarina is a hypocrite…
Spill them receipts.
As far as I know, Kazakhstan will apply to host the event next year. That would be quite interesting, actually..
First of all, Poland is doing so well thanks to the online voting as well
BUT they should look at the entries, not the selection process
Send something current and great like Anyone I Want to Be or Superhero to ESC
I mean… Poland won through both Internal and National selection so idk
haha this article is weird. OFC Poland will win 2020. HALLO? They have the largest audience watching 2 years in a row and the largest audience voting. How can they not win 3 and 4 times with 7 millions watching and voting?
JESC is dead with online voting #JESCdead
i see. Didnt know that about Germany. I feel online voting is kind of different this time. Then you couldnt vote for yourself. Now you can. Hope they change it to 2020 🙂
i think they let poland win again bc they knew they’d bringing in more viewers and more viewers = more money. last year jesc totaled 7m viewers, this year they did that number with two countries (poland+spain) alone. they got what they wanted now next year they’ll change the voting
JESC voting system is bad in general. There’s a reason why on ESC countries give their 12, 5, 2, 6 points, etc. even in televoting. If there’s simply a rule that you can’t vote for your country and your country is like 50% of viewers, then this means that you lose 50% of potential votes right away. Both scenarios are extreme and unfair.
I would be cool if they just left it all to juries. They aren’t that bad in JESC.
Again which part of this post is not true?
ppl prefer engagement and decisional power in a show so a type of voting, whether televoting or online voting, needs to stay. they can just… u kno… block the possibility of voting for your own country which ain’t hard
And if from the start one country can get 98% of potential votes and other country is capped at 50% maximum, doesn’t matter what they send, then its alright? That’s exactly your proposition. That’s why in ESC there’s 12 televote points max from each country, no matter how small or big it is. Because otherwise countries with the lowest amount of viewers would domimate top10 every year – they would give small amount of votes to others and get bunch of it from bigger countries
Regardless of the online voting, Poland managed to produce contemporary and great jesc winners and they hosted a fantastic show without having any experience hosting any eurovision related event. They shouldnt host for the second time i think, the senior contest is much more competitive and they should focus there
They actually hosted Eurovision Young Dancers in Gdansk a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1E3pwkJoA
🙂
the scale of a former competition cant be compared with esc or the jesc
The point of the thread was that Poland was able to pull of a quality Eurovision-branded competition without “having experienced doing so in any other event under the same umbrella”, from which I nicely cited the Eurovision event Poland have previously hosted in 2013 in Gdansk.
contemporary…. if u live in 2016
I hate the fact that this unfair and stupid voting system is overlooked and that Polish fans keep yelling that Poland got it’s victories fair and square. Now before you start putting up the whole well they did really well with the juries!! Well if we used the system before 2017 online voting took over, it was ONLY fully jury and NO TELEVOTE whatsoever, meaning that Kazachstan would have won comfortably this year. I actually want them to keep winning and hosting JESC till no other country is taking part in Junior except Poland! . Why Poland never won ESC… Read more »
Apples and oranges. Poland won twice in a row due to a ludicrous voting system not to be found in the real Eurovision. I so hope they won’t start sending the same juvenile stuff to Eurovision. But they should definitely get to host JESC 2020, if they want to. The EBU made the voting rules that created this situation and if that discourages other countries, that’s the EBU’s fault and problem.
They didn’t get that much online vote support back in 2017 so it will always come down to getting a perfect combi of artist+song+live performance.
They didnt have 7 millions watching in 2017. That came in 2018-2019 and now JESC is dead. No one is even close to that in the other countries. And polish always votes for polish. They are super nationlistic. On youtube every pole had Poland as their number one both years.
If Poles were to stand behind their own JESC entry regardless of what song and performer were being sent by TVP, then they should have been a powerful voting bloc from the get-go. TVP aired JESC 2017 on one of its primary channels but it didn’t attract the same number of viewers it did from the year before, then the following year, they scheduled the contest on a more niche children’s channel where the number of those who watched the show live swelled beyond the likely demographic the channel was supposed to attract. So indeed, local reception to their own… Read more »
Its sad for Small ones. Malta, Wales, Albania will be in the bottom a lot now. in online voting….
Malta ranked second in the online vote in 2017. Albania has always placed below the top 10 since its debut except for 2015, and Wales has only been participating for two years. That’s not “a lot”. The Netherlands is also a small country as well but has been faring well regardless.
italy ha 42k viewers stays unbothered with these past two unexpected top 10 placings (and the songs weren’t even that good). guess u just gotta be lucky at jesc ? bring back real televoting tbh
the fact that they still don’t understand this… also roksana and wiktoria were both already VERY popular before jesc while the alicja girl was unknown. they live in a lies and stuff their eyes with kielbasa smh
If other countries don’t want Poland to win again, they can rather stop whining and send THE BEST SONG of the contest, like Poland did this year. Superhero was the most contemporary and catchy song of the contest, and it would have won no matter which country sent it. And I like the idea of online voting, even if it means the country with the highest viewership winning the whole thing. The idea is to ‘please as many people as possible’ with the winning song. If the Poles make up the majority of viewers, it’s only logical to please them… Read more »
“Superhero was the most contemporary and catchy song of the contest.”
I beg to differ. “Bim Bam Toi” is the most contemporary song we have this year in JESC.
The online voting favoured Poland but let’s be honest they still would have finished respectably if the system was less biased. Poland’s jesc song this year is better than anything they’ve ever sent to eurovision
Finishing respectably and winning is a big difference. Also, I strongly disagree on how you rate this song. It’s a huge nothing to me. Some of their Eurovision songs were far more interesting. At least they had some character and flavor.
The Polish song in JESC this year might be nothing to you, but the song is consistently ranked in the Top 3 by non-Polish Eurovision fans on YouTube. The song is also in the Top 3 in the Eurovision community app. So they might still receive a great result with the usual Eurovision televoting system.
The song has always been one of the biggest favorites to win JESC this year along with France and Spain.
Poland still placed second in the jury vote anyway, so what’s your point?
If i buy the votes…
you leave