Photo: EBU / Andres Putting

Germany’s Eurovision broadcaster NDR recently confirmed that it will reveal more details about its Eurovision selection method at the end of January. Now a report from German news service DWDL says that the country’s Eurovision 2020 entry will be revealed on the small specialist channel ARD One on February 27th at 21:30 local time.

Presenter Barbara Schöneberger — a stalwart of the national selection show — will host the presentation show, which has been billed by DWDL as Unser Lied für Rotterdam. It’s running time is only 45 minutes — far shorter than the country’s earlier national finals. At this time it’s unclear how this artist presentation show will work. Apparently it won’t be aired live, but instead be broadcast as  “a time-delayed transmission from Hamburg.”

As ESC Kompakt reports, ARD One has a history with Eurovision. In the past the (relatively small and unwatched) channel has broadcast the Semi-Finals of Eurovision, as has the German pre-selection with social media comments.

How will Germany select its act for Eurovision 2020?

The news follows much speculation of just how Germany is going to select its act for Rotterdam. Compared to last year, details about the 2020 national final are scarce.

One year ago, NDR had already confirmed that it would use a national final, how the show would work, who the competing acts were and even who the interval act was. This year: crickets.

In September, NDR’s partner Digame confirmed that it would again be involved with the selection process. This would include coordinating the Eurovision Panel — a group of specially selected Eurovision fans, and a jury of 20 experts.

However, while in 2019, the broadcaster had shared numerous updates of the process, there have been no such updates this time. We do know that some fans have received rejection letters after applying to be on the panel, suggesting that at least something is going on behind the scenes.

The broadcaster’s internal selection appears to have been inspired by the Eurovision 2019 success of neighbours Switzerland. The Swiss broadcaster also used Digame’s experts to coordinate a selection panel and jury. But unlike Germany, Switzerland ditched their national final and used the panel and jury to internally select its act.

The result was Luca Hänni with “She Got Me”, who gave Switzerland a fourth-place finish — its best result in over 25 years. Meanwhile, S!sters finished second to last in Tel Aviv, a shockingly poor result, compared to the fourth-place finish Michael Schulte earned in Lisbon the year before.

Are you excited for the presentation show? Who do you think the lucky artist is?

Read more Germany Eurovision 2020 news here

18 Comments
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beccaboo1212
4 years ago

And, since an orchestra is only being used as an interval act during the ESC final, all the competing songs will still be performed to prerecorded instrumentation. This includes the soon-to-be-chosen German entry. 😉

Metalvision Song Contest
Metalvision Song Contest
4 years ago

Germany already had one the shortest selection formats before – just a single show on one evening, no semi-finals etc. That’s how it went ever since Stefan Raab quit. German Eurovision fans have been calling for a more thorough selection process, i.e. a longer one, for years – instead, NDR goes ahead and shortens the selection even further. Well, if that’s what they’re going for, I have a suggestion that will make things even quicker: – go to the iTunes Store, Spotify etc., whatever you prefer; you would need a platform with an “advanced search” feature, though – filter for… Read more »

Hyunwoo
Hyunwoo
4 years ago

Hope Claudia Emmanuela Santoso!!

Erste Reihe beim ESC / JESC
Erste Reihe beim ESC / JESC
4 years ago

I think that the artist will be the winner of The Voice of Germany 2019 (Claudia Emmanuela Santoso) or the runner up (Erwin Kintop) or (because of the form of nomination) Aly Ryan.

Hyunwoo
Hyunwoo
4 years ago

Hope Claudia Emmanuela Santoso!!

Metalvision Song Contest
Metalvision Song Contest
4 years ago

ARD and NDR are to Eurovision what David Benioff and D. B. Weiss were for Game of Thrones: Strong in the olden days (like, 70s to 90s), but now, even though they’ve clearly lost any and all motivation to put effort into the show, they’re still too “proud” to hand it over to anyone else. Also, the fact that they look to Switzerland, out of all possible countries, to figure out how to improve their selection format is yet another symptom of the delegation only thinking in terms of the old “neighbour” cliche. Switzerland had one top ten place after… Read more »

Anita
Anita
4 years ago

It’s all just embarrassing

Jonas
Jonas
4 years ago

Where? ??

What About My Mars
What About My Mars
4 years ago

NDR be like: which career are we gonna ruin again this year?

Purple Mask
Purple Mask
4 years ago

Indeed. William’s award-winning credentials on show there. 🙂
(Or possibly someone else. I know nothing really.)

dutchie
dutchie
4 years ago

I guess we Dutchies are partly responsible for the fact that now everyone is ditching their national final and opting for an internal selection instead. It’s probably good for the quality of the songs chosen (at least I hope so) but it makes the whole thing a little more boring.

AsseMF
AsseMF
4 years ago

I’m so sad ? That Melodifestivalen won’t make any new stage design for the coming 2 years… They will use the stage of last year but use other themes to make it look a bit different.
Melodifestivalen always came up with grand stages but not anymore…

Erste Reihe beim ESC / JESC
Erste Reihe beim ESC / JESC
4 years ago

Okay, Germany seems to have chosen their singer / song internally. In my opinion that’s completely ok, but why does the broadcaster move the announcement show to a small special-interest broadcaster that very few people watch? Either you are not convinced of your singer / song and therefore want to keep the interest low. If the singer / song is awesome, you would try to generate hype. How do you see it? I x my fingers that Germany has found something stunning.

Leo
Leo
4 years ago

Honestly, the NDR/ARD is just the worst at creating any buzz around the entire Eurovision thing and I guess now that they don’t even have an actual preselection they just don’t expect a lot of people to be interested, so they moved it to this channel most people don’t even know about. It’s really stupid because it will only make things worse, but after these years of mistakes with the selection proces what did we expect? I also hope for something great, but I have 0 expectations. It sure isn’t going to be a big name or they would put… Read more »

Ralf
Ralf
4 years ago
Reply to  Leo

Totally agree. It seems like NDR has no real interests in the ESC. I only hope, that they won´t present an artist that most of the ESC fans don´t like ( we had this before and they had to change the singer because of the protests).
Sad story ESC and german broadcaster.

Gin&Monique
Gin&Monique
4 years ago

You technically reported this back in September and completely ignored that you’d written it in the first place.

Stick to your word next time!

Nils
Nils
4 years ago

10 years after Lena we are going to reach a new low in Esc popularity here in Germany. As you can see the song presentation will be broadcasted in a channel 95% of all Germans do not know about it. ARD/NDR do not care about Eurovision and its fans as you see last year in which they taught Sisters were a good idea.
Probably they do it at a secret channel this year bc they are afraid about the reactions, hahaha

Tom
Tom
4 years ago

I heard about internal selection, but we will see ….