It's today been confirmed that Australia will once again compete in the annual Eurovision competition.
The news was broken by TV Tonight following an interview with outgoing SBS Managing Director Michael Ebeid who confirmed that Australia would “100%" be participating in the comp.
Ebeid also shared that the broadcaster would be sharing an announcement soon regarding how the Australian representative artist is chosen when asked if public voting could be introduced.
“We’ve been doing it this way for 5 years and we’re looking at how we can up the ante and mix it up a little bit,” responded Ebeid. “It’s safe to say we will be announcing something in the next month or so. We’re putting some finishing touches on some plans at the moment.
“I would love to get Australians more involved in selecting our artist to represent us. We don’t have the money to do The Voice or Australia’s Got Talent, and it wouldn’t work with an emerging artist.
Ebeid continued on to speak of the selection process, with last year saw Jessica Mauboy represent Australia in the competition, sharing that though all four Aussie artists that have so far been involved in Eurovision have been represented by Sony, that it was nearly a Universal artist selected last year. He did not specify the artist.
Jessica Mauboy placed 20th out of 26 contestants in this year's Eurovision grand final. Mauboy received a total of 99 points for her performance of We Got Love, with only nine of those received from public voting.
Israel's Netta Barzilai won out the competition with her song, Toy, receiving a total of 529 points, making it her country's fourth win in the competition.
Tel Aviv has been confirmed as the host city for next year's Eurovision competition, with the grand final to be held on 18 May 2019. Prior to the announcement over 100 artists called for a boycott of Eurovision if it was held in Israel. Read the full story here.
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