German fansite Prinz-ESC-Blog have had an interview with Thomas Schreiber, Head of Entertainment at broadcaster NDR, and thus responsible for the German Eurovision selections.
Just like last year, the road to the final entry is a long and complicated process, which paid off last year!
This year NDR is following the same route in hopes of repeating that success, finding the best song to represent them.
Prinz-ESC-Blog were curious about the current state of affairs and conducted a written interview with Mr. Schreiber and it gave us an insight in where the Eurovision team is now and what is still to come.
More than a 1000 candidates have applied, of which 465 directly after the call for participation this year’s representative Michael Schulte did!
Together with an Expert Jury, they have managed to narrow down the amount of candidates to 198 right now.
From now on, it’s no longer NDR, but the Fan Jury (also known as Eurovision jury and consisting of a mix of people that were there last year and newcomers) and the Expert Jury that will be deciding upon the fate of these singers.
First the Eurovision Jury, for which 12.000 people applied but consists of 100 people now, will choose a top 50 and then the Expert Jury will make a top 20 out of that.
The first jury meeting is this Sunday in Cologne and the following days there will be more of such meetings, in total there will be: 7 sessions in 4 different cities.
The stages right after are still in the making.
The plan is to everything finalised before Christmas. In the end there will be 10 contestants in the national final.
NDR is also looking at possible cities for a tour, during which they will present the national selection concept and maybe even play a little game with the visitors, where they can grade the songs, but they are still looking into the possibilities of that.
Last year the selection process paid off amazingly with Michael Schulte and his emotional, autobiographical song ‘You Let Me Walk Alone’ reaching 4th place in Lisbon: Germany’s highest finish since their win with Lena in 2010!
The interview can be found in its entirety (in German) right here.
