Svolochy Showdown (History of Margovya)

Svolochy Showdown is a Margovyan national singing contest, and the biggest singing competition in Margovya. It officially started its first season on February 26, 1979, and is now on its 35th season. Some of its remarkable grand champions are Adriyan Baychenko of the band in 1996, and former House Speaker  in 1999.

Auditions
The auditions in the contest are held in different provinces in the nation for a specific period of time (it usually lasts for one to two months). The performer is given two minutes to impress the three judges by performing a song only. Other talents are featured in another talent search in the country, Margovya's Got Talent. If at least two of the three judges vote to 'accept' the contestant, the contestant proceeds to the next round.

At the end of the auditions, only one from each province are qualified to proceed to the contest's next phase, therefore having a total of sixty-five contestants.

One Judge Judgment
One Judge Judgment is considered the conpetition's quarterfinals. The contestants are given only fifteen seconds to perform any song in front of only one judge who's back is turned on them. The contestants perform their impromptu songs one by one, after which they are scored by the judge in a scale of 0.00 to 10.00.

After the performances, the judge announce each contestant's score one by one. All people who got a score of at least 8.00 proceeds to the Contestants' Play Date. Only 20 finalists proceed to the semifinals.

Contestants' Play Date
This round is only optional. If the qualified contestants after the One Judge Judgment exceeds twenty, the contestants go through the Contestants' Play Date, wherein at least five local or international talent scouts, managers, or successful singers spends a day with five of the contestants for the week (one per day) to have question-answer portions, discussions, skill testing, and a performance at the end of the play date.The next day, the five coaches have a meeting about the play date, and decide the twenty contestants who will proceed to the Final Countdown.

However, if only twenty people pass the One Judge Judgment, the Contestants' Play Date is omitted, and the contestants will automatically proceed to the Final Countdown on the following week. If twenty-one contestants pass the One Judge Judgment, the contestants who got the lowest and second to the lowest score from the judge perform a face-off the following day, and the three judges vote on which of the two contestants will proceed to the Final Countdown.

If less than twenty people pass the One Judge Judgment (it happened in 1992, 1994 and 2006), contestants who got the score of 7.50 to 7.99 are considered. However, if the number of the people who passed is still less than twenty, the failed contestants retake the One Judge Judgment, and the people who get a score of 8.00 above in the repeated One Judge Judgment will proceed to the Final Countdown.

The Final Countdown
Fromn then, the twenty remaining contestants will spend the next eighteen weeks performing in the Final Countdown. The performers will perform a full song performance based on the week's featured song theme (e.g., songs from the 50's, songs of, etc.). After the performers have finished performing, the viewers all over the country can now start voting for their favorite finalist. On the saturday of every Final Countdown week, the Bottom 2 or the contestants who got the lowest votes will be announced, and will be given a chance to perform a full song performance in front of the three judges. In the Bottom 2 face-off, the judges each have 7 points to distribute between the probationists (a judge can give 4 points to contestant A and 3 to contestant B, 5 points to contestant A and two to contestant B, etc.) The contestant who have the lower score from the judges will be eliminated, and the remaining finalists will compete for the next week.

The remaining finalists will go on repeating the steps mentioned above, until only two finalists remain in the contest. The remaining two contestants will compete for a whole week in the Final Showdown.

The Final Showdown
The two remaining finalists will perform five songs for the five days of the finals week. These are the song themes that are implemented for the finalists since the contest started its first season in 1979:


 * Day 1 (Monday): Song originally sung by your favorite idol


 * Day 2 (Tuesday): Your favorite song


 * Day 3 (Wednesday): Song featured from your favorite movie


 * Day 4 (Thursday): Song that you hate the most


 * Day 5 (Friday): Original song

The performers perform their corresponding song of the day alternately (meaning if Finalist A sang his song first on Monday, then Finalist B will sing his song first on Tuesday, Finalist A will sing his song on Wednesday, and so on). There are two main criteria on how the grand champion is chosen:


 * Nationwide Vote - After  each performance day, the viewers may vote for their favorite act, but voting will be closed the next day.  After the next performance day, the viewers may vote for that day's performance only. After the finalists finish all their acts, the votes will be added, and their score will be as follows: The finalists who got the higher nationwide vote gets 70 points, while the finalist who got the lower vote gets 65 points.


 * Jury Vote - After each performance day, each judge will rate each finalist on a scale of 0 to 2. After the finalists finish all their acts, The scores of all the judges in all the performance days for each performers will be added.

The nationwide vote score will be added to the jury vote score. The finalist who got the higher score will be declared as the Svolochy Showdown Grand Champion, and wins three million margots, a Yakovich XXX sports car, and a five-million-margot woth house and lot, plus business showcase and sales kit.

