Which acts should qualify for the national selection in Switzerland? That is now in the hands of an expert jury which has just been presented. The jury will cut the 160 submissions down to first 21, and then again to the 10 which will make it to the final held in January 2017.

160 submissions were received in Switzerland. These have to be cut down in order to find the 10 finalists for the national selection scheduled for the 5th of January.

Swiss broadcaster SRF have announced the jury members for the Live Check round. The live check round will be taking place on December 4th. The selected acts will get asked to demonstrate the live competencies, vocal ability and stage presence. The six-10 best rated acts will qualify to the National final in Zurich. The jury members which includes professions like vocal coaches, musicians and music journalists can be found on SRF’s website.

Juries in Swiss national selections

2010 (for the 2011 contest)

There is no online evidence of juries being used prior to Concours Eurovision. When this was cancelled, and Die Grosse Entscheidungs Show became the selection show for Switzerland, all that changed. SRG/SSR together with TSR (French) and RSI (Italian) picked acts from their own regions. in 2011, DRS hosted the Swiss section of the selection, and they used a jury together with radio listeners to determine their 3 qualifiers. RSI hosted the Italian section, and here, the jury had 40% of the final say. TSR hosted the French section, and they selected their act internally and as a result, Anna Rossinelli eventually was the winner with In Love For A While.

2011 (for the 2012 contest)

In 2011, internet voting was brought into the jury mix. Generally speaking, internet voting is beneficial to the modern generation of viewers. SF used a combination of an expert jury and internet voting. This ultimately determined their finalists. On November 10th it was eventually announced that the 1956 Eurovision winner, Lys Assia, was among those selected as SFs semi finalists. In 2012, DRS 3 selected their semi finalists internally. In the RSI selection, the jury members selected 5 of the songs progressing, but it is unknown which of the 5 songs the jury chose. With the RTS selection, the juries were involved in 2 different ways. They whittled the entries, from 27 to the final 10, and combination of their voting, ad public voting gave RTS their semi finalists. Sinplus was the eventual winner with Unbreakable.

2012 (for the 2013 contest)

The German Language selection with SF used an expert jury in their selection. The expert jury together with the public had a 50/50 say in their finalists. RSI selected 2 finalists, and the jury selected Ally with the song Catch Me as their finalist. RTS set up a selection committee, for the purpose of selecting their 3 finalists. This decision was made in the hope that Switzerland would once again qualify for the Grand Final.

2013 (for the 2014 contest)

This is the year that the expert check was introduced. SRF/RTR used an online platform which included entries from 2006 Cypriot entrant Annet Artani and 2011 Croatian entrant Daria Kinzer. The internet voting was combined with the jury votes to give their finalists. The RTS jury had a 50/50 say with online internet voters. Internet voting is now being used for the purpose of reaching a wider audience. In the newly formed expert check stage, Rafael Antonio together and Freda Goodlet were officially announced as the permanent jury members for this round. This years national final was decided by a 50/50 split of jury votes to televotes, whereas in some previous years it has been 100% televotes only.

2014 (for the 2015 contest)

This year was the 5th edition of Die Grosse Entscheidungs show. It was eventually won by Mélanie René with the song Time to Shine. the SRF/RTR selection stage was ultimately the same as previous years. It was a combination of online votes and the decision of an expert jury which made the final decision. The RTS selection was a 100% jury decision. The RTS jury included Catherine Colombara together with Laurent Pavia , Emile Felber and Nicolas Tanner. It was this stage that Mélanie René qualified from. The national final was an equal 50/50 split between the jury and televoting public.

2015 (for the 2016 contest)

Rykka ended up winning this selection with her song The Last of our Kind. Her performance can be seen below. SRF/RTR had an expert jury which included who ended up selecting Half A Smile by Vincent Gross, The Last Of Our Kind performed by Rykka and Feel The Love which was performed by Stanley Miller. For this year, RTS internally selected their finalists so no jury was used. The RSI jury panel consisted of 2008 Italian Eurovision entrant Paolo Meneguzzi together with 2012 Swiss entrant Gabriel Broggini (Sinplus) and Simone Tomassini. Here they had 100% control over who they selected for the national final. For the expert check round, some of the jury members remained the same. The new jury members were Tanja Dankner, Daniel Meister and Andrea Bignasca. The national final of this year was also a 50/50 mix of jury and televoting.

Check out Rykka’s performance from Stockholm in our video below. Coming last in her semi-final she failed to make it to the final.