The sweet girl from Mymensingh, Sania Sultana Liza, has won the Close Up1 2008 title after eight months of hardworking. The name of the winner of the event was announced yesterday (Wednesday) at the grand finale episode of the popular talent hunt show. The first runner-up title went to Apurbo Sarkar from Sirajgonj and Shaju Ahmed Sarkar, the son of Kurigram, became the second runner-up. Atikur Rahman Atik from Naogaon stood 4^th in the competition.

In the final round of the competition, Liza bagged 38 marks from the judges and secured 1379951 sms from the viewers and her total score stood at 88. Apu got 47 from the judges and 688961 sms from the audience and his total score was 72. The judges awarded Saju 39 and he bagged 820453 sms from his fans.

This enormous attempt of Close Up1 started 8 months ago with 86000 aspirants taking part primarily. Later the gradual selection stages were 542, 115, 42, 16 and the final 4.

Welcoming the audience to the gala event at the Chaina -Bangladesh Friendship Centre, Chairman and Managing Director of Uniliver Bangladesh Rakesh Mohan said Uniliver wants to uplift the musical tradition of Bangladesh. Steps have also been adopted to preserve the valuable songs of Shadhin Bangla Betar Kendro for the next generation.

Close Up1 2008 ‘Tomakei Khujchey Bangladesh’ is an attempt of Uniliver to find out the talents from different parts of our country. Liza, the winner of the event, grabbed Tk10 lacs and a car while Apu and Shaju earned Tk5 lacs and Tk3 lacs respectively. The other nine participants of the top 12 were awarded Tk1 lac each. Besides, all the 12 contestants will get the opportunity to take part in concerts to be staged in Europe, America and Australia. NTV will also give them scope to attend in several musical programs.

Country’s popular talent hunt programme, Closeup1 is going to introduce a new voting system in addition to the current voting system. The new voting system is called Tele Voting.

This voting system will be activated on 10th October 2008.

The audience from Bangladesh can vote for their favorite contestant both through sms and over phone calls. For tele-voting, they have to dial a six digit number, i.e.123401 or 123402 or 123410 to vote for the contestants’ code number. Please dial to vote for your favorite contestant from the table below:

The audience can also vote through sms. The procedure of sms voting will remain the same as it was before. For sms voting they have to write down the contestant’s name and send sms vote to 1234.

But there is set limit for each phone number for voting contestants. Each of the audience is allowed to send only 20 votes (10 tele voting + 10 sms voting) for each contestant.