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End of an era: Svante leaves us!

Svante Stockselius, executive Supervisor of the Junior- and Eurovision Song Contest on behalf of the EBU since 2003 resigns after this year's Juniors. It will be his 26th and last event. He used his knowledge of Melodifestival and the 2000 Eurovision song contest in Stockholm to give a new life to Eurovision itself, that was in a bad shape after the 1990's. In few years he doubled the number of participants, introduced televoting and when problems arose eventually the jurys again and made Eurovision a hit again with a good brand name.
In an exclusive statement to Eurovision.tv, Stockselius said: "When I took this challenge nearly eight years ago, the Eurovision Song Contest was at a crucial cross road. Since then it is has become one of the greatest TV-entertainment events in the world! After the successes of Moscow and Oslo, I decided that now would be a good moment to say farewell, and to give others the opportunity to take the event to the next level."
No matter what you think, Svante made Eurovision what it is now. Without his ideas we would be still stuck with Eurovision ballads and Ireland winning every other year. Mind you, I loved the orchestra and even more the songs in national languages but if they still were the rule we wouldn't have had Lordis and Verkas, Helenas and Lena taking part. How dull would that have been all these years? Whoever follows him has huge shoes to fill in.... Good luck!

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