80% of Sweds welcome the new Eurovision format

Of the more than 3200 readers of the Swedish news paper Aftonbladet which so far have voted in a poll where the asked question is “Do you think it's the right decition to let all countries participate in the contest?”, 78.8% answered that they support the idea.

The new concept introduced by the European Broadcasting Union for the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest and onwards, which allows all interested countries to participate in either the final itself or the preselection broadcasted the night before, on Friday, has received a lot of attention in Scandinavian media. Leading papers like Danish B.T., Norwegian Dagbladet and Swedish Aftonbladet have all written very positive articles on the matter, stating that “it doesn't matter anymore if Norway won't receive any point at all” or “Malene W. Mortensen Danish entrant last year can put a smile on her face again … this year will be the last year without a Danish participation”. It seems like the time has come to open a bottle of champagne and start celebrating!