The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 was the fourth edition of the annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest for young singers aged 8 to 15. On 2 December 2006, the contest was broadcast live from Bucharest, Romania making it the second time the contest had been held in a capital city. It was organised by the Romanian national broadcaster, Romanian Television (TVR), in co-operation with the

European Broadcasting Union The European Broadcasting Union (EBU; french: Union européenne de radio-télévision, links=no, UER) is an alliance of Public broadcasting, public service media organisations whose countries are within the European Broadcasting Area or who ar ...

(EBU). The show was broadcast live in the competing countries, as well as Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Australian television channel Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) that acquired the rights for broadcasting the show, which was broadcast on 1 January 2007. This was Serbia's first participation in a Eurovision event as an independent nation. The contest was won by

The Tolmachevy Twins Anastasiya Andreyevna Tolmacheva and Maria Andreyevna Tolmacheva (born 14 January 1997, Kursk), known as the Tolmachevy Sisters (), are identical twin singers and actresses from Kursk, Russia. Aged nine, they won the Junior Eurovision Song Conte ...

from with the song "

Vesenniy Jazz Russia participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Bucharest, Romania. The Russian entry was selected through a national final, organised by Russian broadcaster All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK). The final was h ...

Location

Bidding phase and host selection

On 5 October 2005, it was confirmed that TVR had won the rights of hosting the contest over

AVRO AVRO, short for Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep ("General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), was a Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system. It was the first public broad ...

of the Netherlands (who hosted the next contest). Croatia also expressed an interest in hosting this contest.

Venue

Polyvalent Hall from Bucharest ( ro, Sala Polivalentă din București) is a multi-purpose hall in Bucharest, Romania, located in the Tineretului Park. It is used for concerts, indoor sports such as tennis, gymnastics,

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the g ...

, volleyball, basketball, weightlifting, combat sports and professional wrestling. The hall was opened in 1974 but has since been renovated. It has a maximum seating capacity of 12,000 for concerts and 6,000 for handball.

Format

Presenters

The presenters in charge of conducting the event were

Andreea Marin Andreea Violeta Marin (born 22 December 1974, in Roman, Neamț County) is a Romanian television presenter and TV personality. Early life and career She majored in Journalism, Public Relations & Advertisement, Computer Programming and Mathematic ...

and Ioana Ivan, who also appeared in the green room. Marin has been a presenter at the host broadcaster since 1994 and achieved national fame as the host of '' Surprize, Surprize'', the Romanian version of British light entertainment show '' Surprise Surprise'', on TVR1. Marin has twice appeared on the

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...

, reading out the Romanian televote results in and . Ivan is an actress and television personality and the first child presenter of the event.

Opening and interval acts

The show was opened by various circus style dancers and performers including fifteen children, champions from the

Romanian Gymnastics Federation The Romanian Gymnastics Federation (RGF) is the governing body of gymnastics in Romania. Established in 1906, it supervises gymnastics clubs and gymnasts' participation in international competitions. In 2013, Adrian Stoica was re-elected president ...

, plus characters from the Bucharest State Circus and an on-stage appearance by Mihai Trăistariu, dressed as Count Dracula and was followed by the traditional flag parade introducing the 15 participating countries. The interval act included a performance by last year's winner Ksenia Sitnik, a "fight" between

street dance Street dance is an umbrella term for a large number of social dance styles such as: breakdancing, popping, locking, house dance, waacking etc. Social dance styles have many accompanying steps and foundations, created organically from a culture, ...

and traditional Romanian dance in addition to a remix of songs by the last three Romanian participants at the contest.

Participation

Originally 16 countries had initially signed up for the contest but one unspecified country later dropped out.

Broadcasting in Belgium

Radio télévision belge de la communauté française The ''Radio-télévision belge de la Communauté française'' (RTBF, ''Belgian Radio-television of the French Community'', branded as rtbf.be) is a public service broadcaster delivering radio and television services to the French-speaking Commu ...

(RTBF) of the French-speaking Wallonia in Belgium left the contest this year after co-hosting the previous edition with Flemish broadcaster

Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep The VRT (), is the national public-service broadcaster for the Flemish Community of Belgium. History VRT is the successor to a succession of organisations. The Belgian National Institute of Radio Broadcasting was known as the Nationaal Insti ...

(VRT). They claimed that continuing with the contest was not in their interests financially. The viewing figures for the 2005 contest for RTBF were also low. Belgium continued to be represented at the contest by VRT.

2007 Croatian withdrawal

Hrvatska radiotelevizija (HRT) of Croatia announced that they would withdraw from the 2007 edition and future contests, as otherwise they would have faced a fine from the EBU as they did not screen this year's event live and did not broadcast it on a nationally available network, instead airing it on satellite-only channel

HRT Plus HRT Plus was a Croatian satellite channel owned by the public service broadcaster, HRT. The channel was available via Hot Bird, cable and Max TV, in Croatia and parts of Europe, America, and Australia. History Before the launch of HRT Pl ...

. Broadcasters previously had to screen the event live and on a channel available to the majority of the public however this rule was scrapped in 2007. Croatia withdrew the following year and would not participate for seven years until they returned in

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Withdrawn countries

The Scandinavian broadcasters; DR of Denmark, Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) of Norway and

Sveriges Television Sveriges Television AB ("Sweden's Television Stock Company"), shortened to SVT (), is the Sweden, Swedish national public broadcasting, public television broadcaster, funded by a public service tax on personal income set by the Riksdag (national ...

(SVT) of

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

; decided to withdraw from the contest for various reasons, one being that the content put too much pressure on the participating children. Instead they staged a solely Scandinavian contest called MGP Nordic in Stockholm, as they did in

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

. However, Sweden did participate, which was quite unexpected since they placed 15th all earlier years, with commercial broadcaster TV4 supplying Sweden's entry. This meant that Sweden participated in both contests.

ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...

, the United Kingdom broadcaster of the contest from 2003 up until and including 2005, withdrew from the contest, after they were originally given the rights to broadcast it when the BBC declined the offer. In 2003, they broadcast the contest on main channel

, relegating it to

ITV2 ITV2 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998. For a number of years, it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, a ...

for the next two years due to bad viewer ratings, before their complete withdrawal in 2006. The United Kingdom would return to the contest in with the BBC replacing ITV as the county’s broadcaster. Monaco had stated an interest to take part in the contest, however did not take part in the contest.

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

also withdrew, mainly due to financial reasons. However they briefly returned to the contest in

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and

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yu ...

participated in the 2005 contest, but since then, Montenegro voted for independence. The EBU gave their national broadcaster,

Radio televizija Crne Gore Radio and Television of Montenegro ( cnr, Радио и Телевизија Црне Горе, Radio i Televizija Crne Gore; abbr. /RTCG) is the public service broadcaster of Montenegro. A state-owned company with its headquarters in Podgorica, i ...

(RTCG), extra time to decide whether or not to participate, but they finally declined the invitation. It wasn't until 2014 that they would start participating in the Junior Eurovision.

Participants and results

Detailed voting results

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points received. All countries were given 12 points at the start of voting to ensure that no country finished with nul points.

Spokespersons

# Joana Galo Costa # George Ioannidies # Tess Gaerthe # Andrea Nastase # Assol Gumenyuk # Lucía # Milica Stanišić # Jack Curtis # Denis Dimoski # Amy Diamond # Alexandros Chountas # Liza Anton-Baychuk # Sander Cliquet # Lorena Jelusić # Roman Kerimov

Other countries

For a country to be eligible for potential participation in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, it needs to be an active member of the EBU. It is currently unknown whether the EBU issue invitations of participation to all 56 active members like they do for the Eurovision Song Contest. * Armenian broadcaster ARMTV were negotiating with the EBU to debut. However, plans never came to fruition and they debuted a year later.

Broadcasts

Official album

''Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006'', is a compilation album put together by the European Broadcasting Union, and was released by Universal Music Group in November 2006. The album features all the songs from the 2006 contest, along with karaoke versions.

Notes

References

External links

Official Junior Eurovision Song Contest website
{{Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006 Eurovision Song Contest 2006