The Swedish and host national broadcaster of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, SVT, is reportedly set to issue a proposal to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) regarding a change of time slot for each of the 2016 Eurovision shows.

According to Dagens Nyheret, SVT will put forward a new proposal to the EBU in order to change the time slot of the future Eurovision Song Contest events. This means that instead of the traditional 21:00 CET starting hour, each Eurovision show including the two semi-finals and the Grand Final would begin at 20:00 CET.

Talking about the latest proposal, Executive Producer of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest Martin Österdahl revealed that the thought behind the idea was due to the new countries which have joined the contest in recent years where the starting hour of the contest begins extremely late at night.

If this [ Eurovision ] will grow over time and continue to be the world’s largest TV broadcasting in the next 50 years we must have a similar development as in Sweden: the Eurovision goes down the ages. – Martin Österdahl

Regarding the budget being put towards the forthcoming contest, Martin went on to reveal that the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest will be one of the cheapest in the 2000s, with a maximum of 125 million SEK (€13.3m) being put towards the event.

Focus also turned to the possible theme of next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, in which Martin commented:

Last time in Malmö, we talked a lot about the Eurovision origin, focusing on human rights and helping to bridge cultural differences within Europe. It is equally important today and in 2016 the equality of all people will be in focus.

Despite this, Martin also underlined that the message should not be perceived as political.

The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest will take place on the 10, 12 and 14 May in the host venue of the Globen Arena. A total of 19 countries have confirmed their intent to compete at the contest in Stockholm next May to ESCToday.

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for the latest news on the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest