Christer Björkman returns to Eurovision as 2024 Contest Producer

Per Blankens and Christer Björkman Credit: EBU

Swede Christer Björkman was announced by the European Brodcasting Union (EBU) and Swedish broadcaster SVT as the Contest Producer for 2024.

Christer has a long association with Eurovision, he competed at the Contest in 1992 and then moved into production starting with his creation of the current approach of Melodifestivalen, the Swedish national final.

He was Show Producer for Malmö 2013, Contest Producer for Stockholm 2016 and was also a Producer of the 2017 Contest in Kyiv.

Following his retirement from Melodifestivalen in 2021, he brought Eurovision to the USA with the American Song Contest.

Joining Björkman will be Per Blankens who has worked on Melodifestivalen, American Idol and The Next for China’s Dragon TV channel in Shanghai.

The news comes as an EBU workshop is held in Berlin for Heads of Delegation with a goal to reduce the broadcast time for the Grand Final by up to an hour.

Bjorkman also told Swedish publication Aftonbladet that rumours of a second chance format for this year's Contest were unfounded.

"I don't think we need a lot of adjustments right now."

"We have a format that’s very good, and the big changes happened in 2013 and 2016. I don’t think we need a lot of adjustments right now, we’ll just aim to make a tight show that’s not drawn too long into the night. That is our big goal,” he said.

Christer is a friend of Australia and TV production Blink TV. He was present in the lead up to the original 'Australia Decides' in 2019 where he also served as a jury member.

Does that mean Australia will be back for Eurovision 2024? News on this has yet to be confirmed.

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