Romania | TVR starts receiving submissions for Selecţia Naţională 2019
Big news for Eurovision fans coming from Romania! TVR, Romania's national broadcaster, announced today the call for songs to compete in Selecţia Naţională 2019!
Under their motto, "Fulfill the dream!", TVR opens submissions as of today, 9th of November, until the 10th of December. Submissions are made exclusively online via website application, available here (in Romanian, the English version soon to follow). The interesting thing about the submissions form is that an a capella version of the song is required, meaning that there is a bigger emphasis on the vocal skills of the artists competing.
Selecţia Naţională's Transformation
There are a few changes for this year's edition, even though the format is the same (preselection, semi-finals and final).
For the preselection, which will be happening from the 10th until the 20th of December, TVR will designate a jury and they will choose only 24 songs to compete in the semi-finals, instead of 60, as was the case of the 2018 edition. Another change is the fact that the preselection will not be broadcasted as series of live shows, as they were in the 2018 and 2017 editions.
The similarity with last year's edition is that TVR has decided to organize the semi-finals and the final in different Romanian cities. The semi-finals will be happening in January-February 2019, and we will know the big winner(s) and Romania's representative(s) during February 2019.
However, the big change occurs within the voting system: Romania chose their representative in the past couple years via televote only, this year the representative(s) will be chosen via televote and an international jury! The downside might be the fact that the public's choice will only weigh as much as only one member of the jury.
From the look of things, TVR and the people responsible for organizing Selecţia Naţională will emphasize quality over quantity for the 2019 edition, and we can only hope that this will translate into better results for Romania, after their entry, "Goodbye" by The Humans, failed to qualify in the 63rd edition of the Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Lisbon, Portugal. You can watch Eurovoxx's interview with The Humans here:
May we remind that Romania has participated in Eurovision 19 times since 1994, reaching their best ever placing of 3rd in 2005 with "Let me try" by Luminita Anghel and Sistem. This result was also duplicated in 2010 with the song "Playing With Fire" sung by Paula Seling and Ovi.
What do you think about the changes made for Selecţia Naţională? Have you watched any live shows until now? If yes, let us know on our social media what was your favourite edition! If not, don't worry! Eurovoxx will keep an eye on Romania and the Selecţia Naţională for you, but you will have to follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!
