Norwegian broadcaster NRK has today announced that Melodi Grand Prix, the Norwegian national selection, will take place on 15 March. That’s not all: it’s getting a complete makeover.
The national selection process will be arranged as a week-long music festival. The regional semi-finals have been replaced by three heats which start on the 7th, 8th and 9th of March before the big finale itself. The competition will once again be hosted by Jenny Skavlan and Erik Solbakken. You might be familiar with Erik as he was also one of the hosts from the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo.
This year, the Norwegian Melodi Grand Prix jury has received over 600 entries from hopeful songwriters, producers and artists. To help choose the lucky 15 from this mind-boggling amount of entries before the 15 September deadline, a jury of four music professionals, along with musical director Vivi Stenberg, are chosen for this task.
The 15 entries selected will be split between three heats containing 5 entries each. Three entries from each heat will advance to the final. During the show, the audience will get to see how the entries were picked for the Norwegian national selection process, before the artists perform their entries. The jury will also comment on each performance and voice their opinion on each contribution’s chance of reaching the final.
As well as changing the format for 2014, NRK has also unveiled a brand new visual identity, with a new, cleaner redesigned logo for Melodi Grand Prix, which you can see on this page!
It has been confirmed that Norway will compete at the second semi-final at Copenhagen next year. Earlier this year, Margaret Berger finished fourth in the final at Malmö with her entry “I Feed You My Love”.
What do you think of the changes?
Photo courtesy of NRK
The logo seams written bad by a child
For as long as they keep the quality of the music just like the outstanding “I feed you my love” and don’t bring more cheesy bambos and bimbos songs … I don’t care what kind of revamping they wanna do. Focus on the music and keep the quality on a high note, that’s all that matters to me.
a step in the right direction. the logo is fabulous.
i still got chills everytime i listen to I FEED YOU MY LOVE, my second favorite right after ONLY TEARDROPS!!! Go Scandinavia!!! Go La Norvege!!!
Sounds like a promising format! I like the logo. Reminds me of notebook doodles.