Last month TVR confirmed that Romania would be competing at Eurovision 2019. But since then, we haven’t learned anything about Romania’s planned selection method. Until now. Local media are reporting that Romania will again use a touring national selection format.
The news has been broken by Monitorul de Suceava, the daily newspaper for the city of Suceava in north-eastern Romania. They say that TVR has approached the city of Suceava to host one of the national selection shows in December.
Suceava mayor Ion Lungu is quoted as saying, “We received a request from Romanian Television to be partners, co-producers for the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 edition. A regional final was to be held in Suceava in December 2018. I replied that we agreed to promote the image of the city.”
However, the paper is clear that Suceava has not been locked in as a host city. Monitorul reports that TVR has also approached other cities, with the implication that other locations may be selected over Suceava.
The reported plans suggest that TVR will be following a similar format that it used for Selecția Națională 2018. Prior to 2018, Romania had either only held a lone grand final or just one or two semi-finals.
However, in 2018 — to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Union of Transylvania with Romania — TVR organised a touring six-city event with shows held in cities and towns around the country.
A record fifty-nine acts competed in the five semi-finals, with three entries qualifying from each semi. At the grand final, held in Bucharest, The Humans won with their classic rock ballad “Goodbye”.
However, in Lisbon, Romania faced a shock non-qualification — the only time Romania has failed to make the grand final in the semi-finals era.
Earlier in the year, it was suggested that TVR was reevaluating its Eurovision selection method. However, with the news that another national selection tour may be in the works, it is possible that the broadcaster has decided to stick with what they know.
It is not known how many cities a 2019 national selection tour would involve. The broadcaster may wish to revert to using just one or two semi-finals and a grand final.
Earlier this week, Romania’s 2006 singer M I H A I made a post to Instagram where he contemplated making a Eurovision duet with 2005 singer Luminita Anghel. The two have given Romania two of its best-ever Eurovision results. With Romanian’s disappointing results in Lisbon, this power couple could be appealing to Romania.
What do you think? Should Romania use a big national selection tour again? Or should they focus on quality over quantity? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Wow, they were broke in 2016 and now they have so much money to waste on Eurovision NF. Respect!
they really love the contest and i hope they win soon, nice to see countries who never won getting the trophy
Totally agree with you.
Their selection this year was DREADFUL.
They need juries in the final though, Auzi Cum Bate would’ve won if they’d used them
The juries are also guilty for their flop. The sent a lot of awful songs to the grand final just because of the singers, like Mihai’s terrible attempt.
Henry
Forget what it was this year. What is done is done. It was not bad, Humans had a good performance, it could be much better in the future. I’d like to see Jukebox winning and representing Romania in 2019. Also Ilinca and the duo Luminita-Mihai could be good for the contest. I hope they will change the method of choosing song, because it really was dreadful this year.
It was reported last year that these semis cost relatively nothing to organize (one of the cities revealed it only cost like €42k) but they’re also completely useless… Romania has one of the lowest relative audiences in Europe for the Eurovision, even worse for their selection. They should just focus on one big night.
Melodifestivalen Romania is back!
Great news! Semis again 🙂 The more songs, the better. There were many good songs this year, unfortunately many of them did not reach the finals. Some great bands playing at the intervals too. Goodbye was underrated in ESC
Oh ffs here we go again, why not just select faydee or feli internally instead of this
I don’t understand why they are doing this. Do a semifinal with families and fans only and a final with public. What is the sense of so many shows? You don’t have 1000 great songs, you have only 10 or 15. I don’t see the sense of all these. It need a selection of 15-20 songs for a semifinal for fans only and 10-12 for the public. The rest of the money can be used for promoting the song/artist who will represents Romania. By the way it will not be Feli…she will give birth to the beginning of 2019. Other… Read more »
The process for 2018 was way too long and drawn out. Most of the semi-finals only had one or two half-decent songs. Romania ended up with a really poor choice and TVR should definitely learn from this year’s mistake……….or just bring back Ilinca. That would be great!
Their national final was a joke last year. There were some really good songs in the selection, but they chose an old-fashioned, boring song in the end. To be honest I think that there was something fishy behind that choice.
The thing is that the public voted on purpose for the Humans just to avoid Alexia and Matei from winning the selection. I think that the result taught them a real lesson.
Why for the Humans and not for Feli who was a favorite? This claim is dodgy.
Because Feli’s song was translated into English, and her staging was not the best either. That’s why she came only 3rd in the televotes.
That’s not why. The Humans won with 2000 or 3000 votes. That’s too small and it can’t represent an entire group, in this case Romania. The final result was, in few words, a mess.
I did come across similar comments on ESCUnited comments. There the user had said that people from OGAE group of Romania asked for people to vote for Humans instead of their respective favorites in the last minutes of the final. The logic was Alexia and Matei were leading by 100 votes from the Humans who were in 2nd place, Feli was 300 votes behind and Jukebox were 400 votes behind. They were pretty certain jury wouldn’t vote for Alexia and Matei in actual ESC if they won. This year, despite the multi-city tour , the total number of votes in… Read more »
That’s exatly what I said. (regards to Polegend) 🙂
Goodbye was not bad. A good rock song, with great lyrics
@Rockfan That was a good rock song?? Someone shoot me in the head please.
Yes. Good rock song; BAAAAD choice of stage design and props (mannequins)! 🙁
Blame it on the juries who have a sour taste of music.
no need to lithuania-ise the selection! even in 2017 ilinca had the one song which was ‘the one’ out of the final, having 60 other filler turd songs just wastes money which could go to a better stage performance 🙂 also pls get rid of the old people on the juries who selected their three faves to go to the final aka mouldy 80s rock karaoke ballads # bring back safari girl
I think they’re trying to make it more like MelFest. Quite frankly, a lot of countries ought to try that; perhaps 2 semis and a final.
i am from romania and i hate this.. again tvr waste money on touring and the show on thre eurovision stage will be a joke