Switzerland | Over 400 Submissions For Tel Aviv

With deadlines approaching thick and fast for broadcasters all over Europe for the Eurovision 2019, Switzerland today announced that over the multiple broadcasters they received over 400 submissions to be in the running to be the Swiss act in Tel Aviv.

This morning, a month long submission window closed on the Swiss selection, in a reform to their previous selection methods, this year will not showcase a national final, but instead the artist and entry will be decided by a audience panel and expert jury panel behind closed doors. RTS, RSI and SRF have the ability however to assign a song which is eliminated in a shortlisting round to the final round as an wildcard, meaning the final number of songs up for the final evaluation for Tel Aviv can be as high as nine, although a date of when the Swiss entry will be announced is unknown, the broadcasters have said from the start the winning artist and song and all others in the selection will be notified if they are successful or not before the end of 2018, with the decision most likely to happen in December.

In the past Switzerland has used the national final show "Die Entscheidungsshow" which has used a mixture of a pure televote, against last year a televote/international jury mix, the format had been in place since 2011 but had provided mix results, with the winning entry making it to the Eurovision Grand Final on two occasions, in 2011 and 2014 respectively, they also in that time frame, placed last in their semi final in 2015 and 2016, last year they were represented by the sibling duo "Zibbz" with the song "Stones" they sadly placed 13th and failed to qualify to the final, despite being 10th and in a qualifying spot after the jury final.