YLE has finally woken up and admits one of its biggest mistakes when trying to make UMK popular. "Fading the connection between UMK and Eurovision was a mistake and we won't try to do that anymore" tells YLE's Autio in Helsingin Sanomat. He goes on telling all of sudden Eurovision is hip and popular among the young people, while to his generation it has been something very lame. This blogger might disagree on this as I blame the media (and YLE itself) of making Eurovision looking like something lame over the years. "Originally UMK was aimed for under 30s but now we see such a strict target is madness if you also want to get good viewing figures. We had to take a more mainstream approach." That also means that if UMK was all about the songs, now the show factor is there and therefor YLE has hired some colorful people to make sure it's also a good show: Elias Koskimies and Reija Wäre (they wee behind Krista Siegfrids for example) and Juha-Matti Valtonen.
One thing is clear, this is the most colorful UMK yet. There's a little bit of everything from opera to punk, from bhangra to joik, boyband pop, tango schlager by a Tango Queen, singer-songwriter stuff, pop heavy, EDM, immigrant musicians and the Voice of Finland.
Also, YLE has done a great job with the videos. each entry has its video (that you can see here) and also the judges are gone. "People went to the fridge when the judges were talking" Autio says. This blogger also likes the graphics and the northern lights theme chosen for this year. It's going to be a good one! It's a new fresh start fpr Euroviisut, I mean UMK :-)
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