Changes to Finnish national selection for 2008

New team leads Finnish Eurovision Project

The completely new team is lead by the head of YLE Viihde (Entertainment) Ms Tuire Lindstöm.

The Finnish national final is lead by Mr Matti Grönberg from the same unit.

The pair promises some changes to the Finnish selection process, but will keep it as an invitation only -contest like in the last two years.

"We did not want to change the system, which seems to work well in practice. We wish to get record companies with us in an even wider scale than before to the project and create new success stories", says Ms. Lindström.

The rules for the contest will be published on the 17th of August. "Our team will research amongst other things, how many artists will be invited, how many songs each artist will perform in the finals and how the actual selection is made" says Mr Grönberg.

Both Lordi and Hanna Pakarinen were selected through four semifinals, where three artists each performed two songs. With this method all 12 invited artists got one of their songs to the final.

This method was though widely criticized by fans in 2007, as the artists were allowed to name their favourite of the two songs before the televoting began and invariably those songs also got selected, making mockery of the whole semifinal system.

It seems this new systems leaves the door open even for fewer artists to be invited with maybe more songs for each to perform, or more artists with just one song.

Ms. Lindström's latest credits include being the Executive producer of the third series of Idols for rival broadcaster MTV3 before moving to YLE. Mr. Grönberg has been with YLE longer and is responsible for directing and producing episodes of the long-running comedy series Kummeli and producing the quiz show Se on siinä.

As Hanna Pakarinen finished at 17th place in the Helsinki final, Finland will have to compete for a place in the Eurovision final in the semi-final in Belgrade, Serbia in May 2008.

source and photo:escfinland.eu