Svante Stockselius

Svante Stockselius grew up in Ockelbo, a small town in central Sweden.^[1] He started his career as a journalist. For 16 years, he worked for the Stockholm-based evening newspaper Expressen.^[2]

As head of the entertainment division of the Swedish public service television company Sveriges Television from the late 1990s, he worked for the Eurovision Song Contest 2000, held in Stockholm.^[3] He was also the architect of a major revamp of the Swedish ESC qualification competition, Melodifestivalen, in 2002, introducing four semi-finals and a Second Chance round preceding the finals.^[4] That same year, he went on to work for the commercial Swedish television channel TV4.^[5]

After Estonia's ESC victory in 2001, Stockselius was asked by the Estonian television channel ETV to take part in the preparations for the 2002 event.^[6] In 2003 he was offered the job as executive supervisor for the Eurovision Song Contest,^[7] a position he would hold until 30 August 2010, when it was announced that he would be resigning after the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2010 to "give others the opportunity to take the event to the next level".^[8] In November 2010, Norwegian television executive Jon Ola Sand was appointed his successor in the role.

• (in English) Interview with Svante Stockselius on esctoday.com (2006)
• (in Swedish) "Svante Stockselius är chef för hela ESC" - Interview with Finnish television company YLE (2007)