Cash-Strapped Balkan States Miss Eurovision

The semi-finals of the Eurovision, which started on Tuesday in Denmark, will include only six participants from the Balkan region - Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Greece.

Viewers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Turkey will only watch Eurovision from their TV sets.

Although Bosnia and Herzegovina applied to take part last year, the Managing Board of its national broadcaster later said they hadn’t found enough money to proceed. Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria did not even try to find the funds.

Turkey is meanwhile protesting against the format of the competition, especially the way that the votes are distributed (the jury has the 50 percent of the decision power), as well as privileges of "the big five", the countries that automatically qualify for the finals - Italy, Spain, the UK, France and Germany.

The 2014 Eurovision Song Contest will be held at the B&W Hallerna in Copenhagen, a former shipyard that has been revamped to be able to host state-of-the-art television shows.

Thirty-one representatives will compete in the semi-finals.

The Albanian song, "One Night's Anger", will be performed by Hersi (Hersiana Matmuja) a 24-year-old best known for winning the 52nd edition of Festivali i Këngës.

Sergej Cetkovic, a popular Montenegrin pop singer, will compete with the song "My world" ("Moj svijet").

Macedonia has announced Tijana Dapcevic as its representative for the 2014 Eurovision with a song called "To the Sky", in English, ("Pobeda"), written by Darko Dimitrov and Lazar Cvetkoski.

A Romanian duet, Paula Seling & Ovi, will be competing with a song called...