Big news from Romania: The broadcaster TVR announces changes for the upcoming national final 'Selecţia Naţională', which is supposed to take place on the 11th of February.
#1: The Voting
The biggest change would be the voting, as the winner will be selected by 100% televote this time. That makes Romania the second country after Albania that removes the juryvote from its national final. The televoting will most certainly also include an onlinevoting. A possible reason for this adjustment could be the tensions during and after the last national final, where juries and the televoting did not agree. Dora Gaitanovici won the televoting, but only came 6th place with the juries, which led to the overall victory of WRS. However, these are just public speculations and not confirmed.
#2: Number of Acts
Another change is the number of participants: The last edition of Selecţia Naţională consisted of 20 songs and an additional semi-final. However, the upcoming edition only plans to feature 12 acts in one grand final. Song submissions will be accepted between the 14th of November and the 16th of December. A jury with seven members will choose the top 12 artists and announce them on the 19th of December.
#3: Methods of Submission
A third adjustment has been made by the Romanian broadcaster: Songwriters can submit a song without having a singer. In that case, the artist will be proposed by the Eurovision Romania team and chosen in a mutual agreement with the writers of the song.
The announcement of the acts will not be earlier than mid-December, but former Eurovision participant Mihai Trăistariu (Tornero 2006) has already reached out to the public and asked for songwriters and possible songs as he wants to participate in the next national final due to the change of a voting based on televotes only. Mihai furthermore criticized the role of the juries in the past Romanian national finals.
What do you think about the new adjustments? Would you like to see a song similar to Tornero on stage again? Let us know!
