Israel: KDAM 2012 cancelled; IBA goes internal

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One of the largest websites in Israel “walla.co.il” reports that the Israeli national broadcaster IBA has cancelled KDAM 2012 and opted for an internal selection for Israel’s Eurovision 2012 entry. As of late 2011, IBA published a tender for provate production companies so they could invite them to produce this year’s KDAM. Producer Haim Slutzky later announced that the cooperation and the production efforts were underway. But, earlier this week, Slutzky announced that his company is withdrawing from the production, based on him seeing that ‘IBA’s lack of abbilities which makes them impossible to cooperate with’.

Now, that IBA’s plans have fallen through and they have not made any preparations thus far for KDAM, they have decided to cancel the festival. According to their decision, the special committee, which was supposed to pick the songs for the national final, will now be asked to pick the final entry, artist and song.

The leading artist that is favourd by the commitee to represent Israel is Maya Bouskilla. There are several more candidates to take part in the KDAM like Eidan Reichel, Ronny Dloomy, Omer Adam, The Maestro and Chan Ahroni. In case that the Kdam is going to open to several artists, it seems that Maya Bouskilla is not going to attend it.

IBA said that several artists are being reviewed by the committee but the committee had not decided yet about the appropriate artist to represent Israel in the coming ESC 2012. IBA’s intentions are to select the eventual entry for Baku by the end of January.