Photo: YLE

The Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE has already been planning the Song Contest to be hosted in Finland in 2007. Already on 23 May they announced:

YLE TO HOST THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST The heavy rock band Lordi's historic victory at Eurovision on 20th May means that YLE will be holding the competition in 2007. YLE management has decided to take up the challenge. Eurovision will cost as much as 10-15 million to organize and the Finnish government has promised to cover some of the costs. Director-General Mikael Jungner says that the expense will not lead to dismissals at the company, and the television fee will not be raised. The balancing of the company's finances will, though, continue as planned.

The first step was to appoint two directors to lead the project: Olli-Pekka Heinonen is the director of YLE’s Finnish language Television. He is also a member of the YLE board of directors. Mr Heinonen was Minister of Education from 1995-1999, and Minister of Transport and Communications from 1999.

Ville Vilén is the head of programming for Radio Suomi and the other project leader responsible in Finding a suitable venue and theme for the contest. In an interview with newspaper Savonmaa (published in his native Eastern Finland City of Savonlinna) he says the selection of presenters is still far away. He says that the search for a suitable venue is going on together with EBU. He mentions that the host city will need to have several thousand hotel beds and for logistics purposes connections to an airport will have to be smooth. The press centre will have to accommodate 3000 journalists. Even so Mr. Vilén says, that at least Helsinki, Turku and Rovaniemi are still being seriously considered.

About the theme and content, Mr. Vilén says the contest has come to a turning point. It now interests more young people than ever and he does not think Finland will host a contest according to the standard mode of previous years. He does not think the postcards between the songs will be used to boost tourism in Finland, but could be used for something altogether different. Mr. Vilén says they re actively following the debate on YLE’s message board and think the general public might have some good ideas for the show.