Finland 2018 • Saara Aalto - "Monsters"

Point of view: Finland flopped again in Eurovision - and the YLE's sinecure workers aren't taking responsibility

Finnish Ice Hockey team's GM Lauri Marjamäki isn't enjoying best of his days currently. The team stumbles in Paris, and nothing positive hasn't been told about relationship between the players and the coaching team. Marjamäki is likely getting fired and he should be worried about it as the Ice Hockey Association has sacked coaches during the competitions.

But YLE has chosen a different path. Finland can screw up at Eurovision year after year and the people who is responsible for this, the people from Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu (Yes, that contest with a stupid name which chooses the Finnish entrant) doesn't have to be afraid for losing their job. Has anyone thought to blame YLE when Finland hasn't qualified to the final? Nope. People explain the reason for what happened in Kiev, not what happened before Kiev. By the way, in Kiev everything went great for the Finnish delegation and for Norma John. Norma John gave a lot of interviews and they were high on the betting odds.

But let's go 10 years back. Actually 11 years, 2006 is a good year to remember. Finland won then Eurovision historically. Only few remember that Lordi was selected through an invitational national selection. Yes, 12 Finnish artists from different labels were invited to participate. All of the artists sang 2 songs in the preliminary rounds were the audience chose the best one to the final. Then in the final, six artists were chosen to the super-final where the winner was selected.

The following years the invitational national selection was continued with minor changes. In 2010 everyone was able to participate with the ones who were invited. The winners of the Tangomarkkinat also got an automatic place to the selection. It worked, it wasn't organized by a small groups (I guess the writer meant it wasn't anymore labels' contest). Even though Finland didn't won after Lordi, during the years of 2006 and 2011 Finland qualified every time, except in 2010. Because everything was almost great, it had to be changed and of course to a way worse direction, for a reason no one understands. And so the UMK was born. During the UMK (2012-2017) Finland has qualified only twice! Terrible!

YLE could thing for real, that when you search for the Finnish Eurovision entrant, not only the UMK winner, what artists should be added to the selection. That's why UMK should not have chosen Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät which you knew immediately that they will win the UMK, but it has no chances in the Eurovision. And it didn't have, they were dead last. And no, PKN isn't bad, it just doesn't belong to Eurovision.

Finland could have a fair chance every year in the final. We have Russia as a neighbor, but we're not slavic. We are part of the Nordics, but we're not part of the Scandinavia. But we can make music. And when the concept is right and we find the passion for it, we can also make music for Eurovision. It is enough to the final. Of course we will not fight for the glory every year, but sometimes for sure.

There is very professional people working for UMK, I have seen it. Most of them do it with passion and they want to see Finland succeeding. But there's the producer Anssi Autio who doesn't seem to give a damn about succeeding in Eurovision. If he's interested, he would have left his post long time ago. If YLE wants to succeed in Eurovision, Autio would have been moved to another projects. Only in few jobs you can fail so many times than in YLE. That's what people usually call as a sinecure.

Now it seems that that there's no enough interest and passion for succeeding. I assume, Autio & the co. has visited in Sweden to learn, as people usually tend to learn from people who succeed. But where's the learned skills are shown? Does anyone plan their show for 4 months like Swedish representative Robin Bengtsson did before their national selection? Sweden got to the final easily.

YLE has used lack of funds as a reason in almost everything. Even in UMK. But it's so tiring to listen the same mantra as this year (again) there were countries, which budget was way lower than we had (also, Autio declined to tell me the budget of the UMK when I asked about it). But if YLE, who gets money from the tax payers really thinks that they don't have enough money, then what prevents YLE from withdrawing the contest? MTV3 (which also belongs to EBU) can manage it. It can't get any worse.