Rest easy Eurovision fans, this week’s ‘SVT Thursday’ news, the traditional time to tweak rules and formats for the 2013 season, focuses on the Andra Chansen round of Melodifestivalen.
In previous years the eight songs making it to the second chance of Melodifestivalen to claim the last two berths in the ten-strong final have fought it out in a head to head musical brawl to the death. Here’s how I described last year’s Andra Chansen in my tour of the National Finals, “Beyond the sequins“:
The show doesn’t have a nice long twenty-minute voting window for every song to be considered by the public while watching the latest ballad from Bonnie Tyler… this is a knife fight between songs singing for their musical life. The show will open with two songs going to head to head, then the phone lines will open for just four minutes and we find out the winner of the first duel.
Four ‘first round’ duels are going to be held tonight in the Rosvalla Event Centre, but that’s not the end of the show. The winners of each duel will be paired up once more in a ‘second round’ – they’ll sing once more, the pubic will vote again, and the field will be halved once more to get the winners of the tickets to the Globen Arena in the Swedish capital the following week.
This is violent, unforgiving, and gladiatorial. Yet at the same time it’s not cruel in the same way as Britain’s Got Talent or The X-Factor. The voting is down to the songs, and there is no influencing panel of judges to get in the way. The performers sing for their careers, knowing they weren’t good enough in their first heat to qualify directly. It’s viciously entertaining and wonderfully honest musical theatre.
Not this year. For 2013 the eight songs will all be performed in one block, and a mass vote will take place. The top four will then be seeded into just two duels, with #1 and #4 fighting it out for one place, and #2 fighting #3.
The changes should see the two songs that top the voting going through, rather than one of the lower placed songs having a good run at the knockout format. Last year the two performers to top the voting at Andra Chansen did not go through. Top Cats took one of the slots, while only being third in the overall voting numbers with 98,872 votes, while Sean Banan’s 111,443 votes were cancelled out as his duel was against the other qualifier, Thorsten Flinck (who sailed through on 196,014 votes).
Whether you think ensuring the top voted songs qualify makes for a fairer competition, or you would rather the vicious edge of the seat duel format is more honourable is an interesting debate, with both sides having justifiable reasons for being a good choice.
Melodifestivalen’s AndraChansen 2012
For the record, though, can we have the SVT Thursday news posted on a Thursday, rather than at close of business on Wednesday in Stockholm? It really upsets the rhythm….