Switzerland: SRF on-line voting open, RSI regional final on 9 November!

As in previous years, Switzerland will decided their 2016 representative thorough a national selection were four broadcasters in Switzerland are involved: the Swiss-German broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), the Swiss-French broadcaster Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), the Swiss-Italian broadcaster Radiotelevisione svizzera (RSI) and the Swiss-Romansh broadcaster Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha (RTR).

The voting has now opened on SRF‘s online portal, and thus the country takes another step towards selecting their Eurovision entry for Stockholm 2016.

A massive number of 150 songs have been submitted to the platform. SRF keeps the voting open, and that means every Eurovision will have a say concerning which 10 entries should proceed to the expert check round of the voting process. Just go into the SRF’s website, and there you will be able to cast your opinion. Remember, you can only submit up to four votes, and this round of the voting process will close on November 17th.

A jury vote will be combined with the results of the online vote,  thus deciding which ten entries should proceed. The ten acts qualified for this next round will perform live in front of the expert check, which is scheduled to be on December 6th, together with nine more acts. These acts are representing different Swiss broadcasters,  six of these nine will represent RTS, and the rest will represent RSI.

RSI will evaluate all the entries that have been submitted to them by the help of a special committee. This panel will consist of 3 members, and together on November 9th they will choose three songs for the second phase. The second part is as mentioned earlier, live auditions in front of an expert check jury on December 6th.

All in all there will be a total of 19 acts performing in front the expert jury. This panel of judges will choose a total of six songs, three of these from SRF, two from RTS, and one from RSI. These will later be the entries that participates in the national final on 13th February. The final will be held at Kreuzlingen, and the act chosen to represent Switzerland will be decided via a 50/50 jury televoting deliberation.

In 2015 Switzerland chose to have a national selection in order to decide which entry would get to go to Vienna. Melanie Rene was the lucky winner, and represented her country in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Time to Shine. Unfortunately, she failed to qualify for the grand final.

Next year’s Eurovision Song Contest will be held on May 10th, 12th and 14th at the Ericsson Globe Arenas in Stockholm.

As familiar, Switzerland is one of the founders countries of the Eurovision, and also the country that hosted the first Eurovision in 1956. Although the Swiss have won the contest twice, first in 1956 with Lys Assia, and then in 1988 with Celine Dion, it has been quite a while since their last victory.

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