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| Image borrowed from eurovision.de |
Oh, Germany. So many people were longing for proper news about next year's ESC and now there seems to be something coming up every day.
When Xavier Naidoo was announced as the German representative the other day, reactions were mixed to say the least. Some were euphoric, some outright hostile. I figured that NDR wanted the added publicity that controversy brings and that they knew what they were doing.
Apparently not. Today we had another big announcement: there had been a change of heart and Xavier Naidoo would not represent anyone in Stockholm. The performer himself stated that NDR approached him to represent Germany and that also this new decision came from them and not from him.
If I was puzzled when Naidoo was selected, then it is nothing compared to what I feel now. It seems the strong reactions came as a big surprise for the broadcaster and that someone got cold feet.
How this reaction could come as a surprise to anyone is beyond me. The people selecting him in the first place must have known how divisive he is. It took me less than 45 seconds to understand the full scale of how divisive he is when reading his article on Wikipedia. What had they expected?
If this is what really happened, that a broadcaster talks a big name into doing the ESC only to change their minds and reject him in public as soon as there is criticism, it shows an incredible lack of backbone and I suppose NDR will have a bit of a hard time convincing anyone else to take the bait. Who would run the risk of getting dropped this way? Not everyone could walk away from it as unharmed as Xavier Naidoo.
So. What next? Will NDR try to convince another star to do the job for them? Or will they throw together a national final at short notice? To be continued...
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