We know that the Eurovision Song Contests of 2013 and 2016 were revolutionary, and had a huge impact on the direction of the Song Contest over the last decade. Standing audiences are now customary; running orders are set by producers each year; the Big 5 each get an appearance in the Semi Finals to shine; and the voting sequence every year now always ends on a dramatic cliffhanger.
All of these and more are changes that Sweden’s SVT has brought to the table during their hosting of the Contest.
SVT has also brought many changes to its selection show Melodifestivalen. If the broadcaster is looking for new and innovative ideas for Eurovision, will some of the key Melodifestivalen moments come to the Song Contest? Which ones could be candidates for the Contest?
1. An App That Offers Much More
The Eurovision Song Contest has an official app. On it you can view all the news, photos and images, as well as rank all the songs and find content available on the official social media channels for the Song Contest. In certain nations, one can even use the app to register your votes.
As a one-stop place to find out everything going on with the Eurovision Song Contest, it delivers all that is asked. The critique I will hold against the app is that there is nothing on there that can not be found elsewhere rather easily. What is the unique reason that fans of the Contest would jump into the Eurovision app?
We don’t have this issue with the Melodifestivalen app. It has a social function so you are able to see how your friends voted. It has a reward system, awarding ‘trophies’ to visitors for unlocking different bonuses (i.e. for tipping all the qualifiers in a Semi Final correctly). It is also very well known for its card-collecting function, the current app has 1136 different cards that can be collected and swapped with each other. This app makes it possible not just to keep up with those you know but also for making new friends within the Melodifestivalen bubble and it does so with ease.
There is much inspiration that the Eurovision team can take from Melodifestivalen to give any app something special that generates the type of loving Eurovision community we want to foster, which will make any app the must-check hub for any Eurovision fan.
2. An App With App Voting
The main reason why Melodifestivalen’s app is so successful and scores those world-record claiming second screen statistics, is how the Swedish population use the app during the show itself. The app allows voting. Melodifestivalen has one of the biggest viewer/voter ratios of any entertainment show on the planet and the simple to use, button-bashing voting system is one of the attributing reasons why.
The reason that it is such a lock on the population though is that those voting get the perk of up to five free votes/artist/voting window during Melodifestivalen. The economics of voting being free draws in people to try out the app, try out voting for the first time, and they keep coming back for more week after week.
The Eurovision app does have a voting function but all it does is act as a middleman to convert your preferences into votes through the phone network/card payment system. Given the phone and text numbers are displayed on the screen this method is a convenience for a few. The lesson from Melodifestivalen is that the success of the app starts with the free voting and spirals from there. Paying to vote feels so 20th century and there is so much more to be gained for the show sponsors and the footfall of viewers navigating an app than the revenue from televoting alone will provide… as long as this can be shared equitably with broadcasters, many of which need the televote income to contribute to the budget.
Just make sure the servers can cope with demand. If experience is anything to go by, the take-up of free voting will be a magnitude more than anybody would otherwise expect.
3. An In-House Team For Everybody
One feature of Melodifestivalen’s six-week-long tour is that SVT organises a team of house dancers to travel alongside the tour. They are used by SVT for the interval acts in each show but are also available for any of competing artists to use for their own numbers, so if you keep seeing the same faces pop up on multiple acts during Andra Chansen, now you know why.
For the artists in SVT those that choose to use this method benefit from an obvious cost-saving, and one wonders why this idea hasn’t been formalised for a Eurovision context. With the advent of pre-recorded backing vocals, there has been an increase in smaller delegations sending a soloist to Eurovision without backing singers and dancers with them on the gigantic stage. This low-cost way to fill the stage would not only make Eurovision a more entertaining show but also one that was more even, reducing the gap between the richer and poorer broadcasters in Europe.
SVT has been vocal in the past about wanting to increase the on-stage number from 6 to 8 people. This change would be one way I could see other delegations agreeing to this, knowing that the increased cost to them to have a big all-dancing number would be shared amongst everybody rather than a burden for them to cover the extra hotel nights alone.
4. An Earlier Start Time
One of the changes that SVT did not manage to convince the EBU Reference Group to adopt in previous years was an earlier start time for the Eurovision Song Contest. The three Eurovision shows start at 21:00 CET, whereas each Melodifestivalen broadcast starts one hour earlier at 20:00 CET.
This time feels a far better fit for a show that pushes itself to be a party for all. In its current format, the last song to perform at the Eurovision Grand Final starts to go on stage at a time approaching 23:00 CET, which few children across the continent are going to be allowed to stay up for.
A one-hour shift would be a cultural shift to make watching Eurovision more accessible for the entire family. Iceland is well known for how popular Eurovision is for its public broadcast with the vast majority of the Icelandic TV audience tuning in. There are many reasons behind this but one of those reasons is the 19:00 local time start – making this the perfect show for the whole family.
Don’t we all want to be a little bit more Iceland?
5. A New Way Of Eurovision Journalism
There’s many a Eurovision journalist happy to take potshots at the reduced press access to Eurovision this year, but why don’t we explore an alternative rather than bemoan the ways it used to work?
At SVT’s Melodifestivalen the press is, like at Eurovision, not allowed to watch the first rehearsals of the artists on the stage. However what SVT does is allow for three-minute clips of each act to be watched later, after the artist’s delegation has checked them, via an on-demand service. The beauty of this is that it means that a Eurovision journalist need not sit online all day to get the first glimpse of all the songs, nor be constrained by the viewing times or buffering issues, but they can view at their pleasure. A press member for Melfest can go through the seven competing songs each week in less than half an hour, meaning they can spend more of their time focused on everything else around the contest rather than glued to the computer screen.
One element that needs to be re-evaluated in the world of Eurovision is the use of press conferences. Press conferences, and the idea that journalists one at a time ask questions to put the artists on the spot, don’t work at the Song Contest. Artists are not the type of people you want to force standalone quotes out of, they are the people who we want to see shine with their personality. At Melodifestivalen, the system for post-results press conferences is that each participating media waits in line for a short 2-3 minute interview with each act, and there you can ask questions in a more informal setting fair friendlier for a competing artist.
Save the big press conferences for the management at the top, but give the artists a chance to do something more personable.
6. Europedia
With thanks to Gustav Dahlander at SVT, the best addition to modern Melodifestivalen coverage has been Mellopedia, the wiki-style website with a treasure trove full of nuggets of information about the competing acts and much more about Melodifestivalen.
The level of detail given to each of the competing acts goes above and beyond anything that we have seen anywhere else. Not only is it a one-stop source for all song lyrics, composers and their histories in the competition it is here you get the official answers for each song’s BPM, number of camera cuts and technical details about all the props and pyrotechnics being used. I find it a must-use resource during Melfest season. It is a depressing reality check to note how the wiki format is by far easier and quicker to navigate than anything any official broadcaster or the EBU has rolled out.
It is time for the Eurovision equivalent. Let’s make a project so that Europedia can fill the same niche as Mellopedia can, and make it a part of the history book to be passed on Contest after Contest.
7. Andra Chansen, Sponsored By TikTok
At each Semi Final we have ten qualifiers head off to the Eurovision Grand Final. After each Semi Final we have the annual social media furore wondering why x or y was robbed and should have made it but didn’t.
In Sweden we have a solution for these almost-there songs, Andra Chansen (in recent times the standalone Semi Final show, now integrated into the final heat). This is where the songs that placed third and fourth in each heat and didn’t make it to the Friends Arena spectacular get one more throw of the dice.
Can we replicate Andra Chansen at Eurovision, to turn that negative energy into a positive post Semi Final broadcast? It would be difficult, scheduling would be tight for a start so we would be unlikely to squeeze in a separate show, so ideally delegations would like to know that same evening if they were through or not. To be fair, something similar after the final heat has concluded will be a part of the new format that SVT is using this year.
So here’s the crazy suggestion. A TikTok Andra Chansen wildcard. Give users on Eurovision’s official partner app one hour after the Semi Final has closed the chance to save one act through a platform on the site of Eurovision’s media partner. Watch that negativity turn into positivity and then an announcement of the final qualifier at the end of the qualifiers’ press conference. The idea of using just TikTok is actually an idea we see in Germany to select their final place in the National Final. Say what you like about the eventual winner of that selection Ikke Hüftgold, but he did bring diversity and talking points to an otherwise rather dull German National Final.
A part of me hates this idea and hates the needless way that social media would be manipulated to make the show more about competition and popularity than about composition and song, but Andra Chansen has proven that having a stepping stone for other songs to squeeze through can help the diversity of songs in the show’s finale. Is the engagement it would create worth it?
Do You Have Number Eight?
What do you think of using Melodifestivalen as a source of ideas for the Eurovision Song Contest? Are there any other areas of Melfest that would benefit the Song Contest? And would you bring anything to Malmo 2024 from other National Finals? The comments are open…
Let me talk about 2 of these ideas:
Idea 3 – An In-House Team For Everybody:
This is the kind of idea that sounds and looks great on paper but won’t work in reality.
You will create a scheduling nightmare and increase friction between delegations, who use this idea. It works in during Melfest because everyone are in Sweden and travelling is less a hustle.
Rehearsals is the keyword here. A delegation would like to rehearse as much as they can and see the interaction between the dancer(s) and the singer, make changes when needed. A VR solution is only good up to a certain point in the process. Changes in routine are happening till the very last minute and changes are possible when the dancers are in close proximity, so they can practice the change directly. The tension between delegation will only increase in the 2 weeks leading to the contest, where delegation will want the dancer available for them most of the time and not just the part of the time the dance will be allocated to te delegation.
In case of non-qualification, a delegaten may be inclined to point a finger toward a dancer , just because they didn’t have them full time for themselves.
I am also not sure that this will lead to financial costs saving. The dancer(s) and the singer will need sometime to rehearse together and who exactly is going to pay the travel costs(airfare, accommodation) for either the dancer(s), when travelling to a certain country or if the singer has to travel to Sweden. And this before I mention the hour wedges of these dancers, which are probably higher in Sweden, than let’s say Albania or Moldova, which will make this even less economically advantage, even if the costs are shared by everyone.
In short – Not a well thought idea.
Idea 7. Andra Chansen, Sponsored By TikTok:
What not clear from this idea is the following:
Will the winner be the 10th qualifier from each semi? Which means we have only 9 qualifiers from each semi. Do you really see the EBU going for such an idea?
Or will this winner will be instead 1 of the qualifier announced earlier on the evening? or maybe an 11th qualifier from each semi? The first is unfair for anyone and the later means a longer final, which will not happen.
How exactly you make sure that everyone has a fair chance of expose in TikTok, and not influenced by an algoritme who tends to be biased by its nature?