Bayern 3, one of the national radios managed by ARD, the main German public broadcasting group (which oversees Eurovision participation through NDR, the “northern” branch, based in Hamburg), has announced the launch of a “call” for the ‘sending of songs for Unser Lied für Turin, the national final which in March will see five songs and as many artists challenge each other, with the ticket to Turin as a prize.
The radios will choose the five tracks: Bayern 3 but also all the other radios belonging to ARD or Antenne Brandenburg, Bremen 4, HR 3, MDR Jump, NDR 2, SR 1, SWR 3 and WDR 2. The choice of the winner instead will be delegated exclusively to the public.
The details of the format and also of the selection process will be revealed later. It is certain that this path is the one that has given the best results in recent years, but also the worst. Lena and “Satellite”, winners in 2010 were selected in this way. The same was true for Roman Lob’s “Standing still”, eighth in Baku in 2012, both selected, however, first only as artists to then be paired with the song in the national final.
The format of the “classic” festival, therefore with a dry evening that directly chooses the singer and songs, was instead active from 2013 to 2019, with alternating results here too: this is how Michael Schulte’s fourth place was born with “You let me walk alone” in 2018, but there were also six placings between 18th and 27th place, with two last places and even one zero, that of Ann Sophie in 2015 with “Black smoke“.
The difference will probably be made by the level of proposals and names that will line up at the start. Over the years, this format has in fact also seen some names of international standing compete, such as Cascada, then (German representatives in 2013 with “Glorious”) or national ones such as Sohne Mannheims, Unheilig, Santiano, Alexa Feser, all regulars of the summit of the German chart.
But it also offered good visibility to only partially mainstream names on the German scene such as Laing, Oceana, The Baseballs, Noize Generation, Madeline Juno (today one of the best emerging names), Ivy Quainoo or to interesting crossover projects such as Die Priester, MarieMarie, Avantasia and Gregorian.
However, over the years, the level of proposals had dropped somewhat. So much so that both for the then canceled 2020 edition and for 2021, ARD had preferred a sort of internal selection involving a panel of experts and fans.
The penultimate place, with a resounding zero on televoting for Jendrik convinced us to backtrack, in the hope that the results will also return. The involvement of the radio in the selection in this sense bodes well.
an oikotimes original text
