Over one year ago, Cyprus revealed their plan to search for a Eurovision 2023 entrant with the help of a casting show run alongside record label PANIK records. But in the end this never happened, with the intended show being ditched in favour of internally selecting Andrew Lambrou. However, the Cypriot team aren’t completely scrapping the idea. They’re continuing with their original plan for a talent show – but only for 2024.
George Arsenakos, CEO of PANIK records, revealed in an interview for TV show Breakfast@Star that Cyprus will use a talent show to choose an act for Eurovision in 2024:
“We have agreed with the state channel of Cyprus to do a talent show, the winner of which will represent Cyprus in the 2024 Eurovision contest.”
Therefore, PANIK records will still be working together with the national broadcaster of Cyprus, CyBC, on the show.
It was reported that All Together Now was the talent show franchise originally intended for use as the Eurovision 2023 selection format. Its winner was meant to represent Cyprus in Liverpool.
However, it’s not known yet if All Together Now remains the show that will be used for the Eurovision 2024 selection.
Even if it’s not known which specific talent show will be used, CyBC and PANIK records have seemingly already talked about the plans behind closed doors. PANIK records is the record company behind previous Eurovision acts such as Demy, Eleni Foureira and Tamta.
George Arsenakos’ comments also mean we now have our very first confirmation for the 2024 contest, even if there’s 19 months until the show takes place. That’s what we call Eurovision passion!
Finding an act for Eurovision with the help of a casting show has turned out surprisingly successful in recent years – at least most of the time.
Acts selected for Eurovision through such shows include Eurovision 2018 winner Netta, who won over audiences on Israel’s The Next Star. Additionally, Michela and Destiny won their respective seasons of X Factor Malta in order to appear at Eurovision.
Maybe choosing Eurovision acts with this method is a south Mediterranean Sea thing.
The last time Cyprus used a national selection was back in 2015. John Karagiannis won and took his dreamy ballad “One Thing I Should Have Done” to Vienna. He surprised many fans by qualifying to the grand final.
Since then, the country has chosen its act internally and made it out of the semi finals every time until earlier this year, when Andromache failed to qualify in Turin.
Cyprus will be hoping to return to Saturday’s night show in 2023. Last week it was revealed Andrew Lambrou will be the Cypriot act for Liverpool. Andrew is a singer of Cypriot origin, living in Australia. He tried to represent his down under homeland in 2022 but only came seventh at the Australian selection for Turin.
What do you think about using a casting show for selecting a Eurovision act? Which singer do you want to see representing Cyprus in 2024? Let us know in the comments below.
“PANIK records is the record company behind previous Eurovision acts such as Demy, Eleni Foureira and Tamta.”
Tamta’s record company is Minos Emi, not Panik.
2016 – Swedish songwriter/producer
2017 – Swedish songwriter/producer
2018 – Swedish songwriters/producers
2019 – Swedish songwriters/producers
2020 – No swedish help
2021 – Swedish songwriters/produces
2022 – Swedish songwriters/producers
Could we perhaps ask that at some point the Cypriot entry will be written by people that actually are from there? A lot of countries depend their skills on just having money to buy the song, and it kinda makes a lot of these artists useless, as they present a song that doesn’t represent them as an artist at all.
This goes for Azerbaijan too.
Better yet, just bring a nationality rule to Eurovision. (and let San Marino outsource to Italy as an exception)
Luxembourg and Monaco outsourced their talent for years because they were such small countries, namely poaching singers from the French music scene. If it Such a nationality rule was made, they would’ve been sunk.
I suspect this was originally planned for 2023 but they pushed it back a year.
Well they originally announced a talent show for 2023 so that’s a fact 😉
That’s what I said.
Thats the exact reason why ERT is not collaborating with Panik, they wanna have full control and its all about money. And apart from Eleni Foureira, all of their artists flopped.
I wouldn’t consider qualifying every year except 1 and finishing within the top 15/16 every time flopping. Especially not for an tiny nation such as Cyprus.
before panik records Cyprus hasnt done as bad as other tiny nations. Panik just gave them access to Greek artists, nothing more