A special program was held tonight on TVR following the announcement of Romania being disqualified from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest due to a debt of the Romanian broadcaster to the EBU.

The purpose of the program was to let the people of Romania ask questions and get direct answers regarding the loss of EBU membership and the disqualification from the Eurovision Song Contest 2016. As this sensitive subject involves many factors, as the Romanian government, the Romanian citizens who pay annual TV licenses for TVR, TVR itself and the EBU – many hard questions and subjects rose to show some kind of frustration of some of the Romanian people from TVR:

“Why do we have to get into this embarrassing issue? Why can’t the broadcaster pay its debts and how the 4000 employers of TVR has issues with producing good content, compared to PrimaTV or ProTV? As a 22 years old, I can say that there is only one program I follow on TVR. The rest – god forbid. It is of course unfair that our artist would not sing, but the decision in Europe seems fair. Learn to take this attitude and not to consume public money in that way. This is my personal opinion, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who think like this among the public.”

TVR has concluded the broadcast with an optimistic point of view, saying “We still have a chance. It’s not the fault of the EBU. We must first solve our internal problems. We hope to remain EBU members and participate in Eurovision next year. Thank you for being with us!”

Romania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1994 and haven’t missed a single final since the semifinal system was introduced in 2004. Still waiting to take the contest to Bucharest, Romania’s best achievements were finishing third in 2005 and 2010.

Ovidiu Anton was supposed to represent Romania at the second semifinal of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, after winning both the jury and public votes in Selecția Națională 2016 with the song Moment of Silence.

Stay tuned to ESCToday for more news regarding Romania at the Eurovision Song Contest