Why is this year’s winner of the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest played less than previous year’s winners? "Because radio controllers disagree with the voters' choice, and are bad losers," claims one of Sweden’s largest newspapers, Expressen. Others point out that female high pitched voices have always been discriminated.

"No way!", answers a representative from the public radio, SR, Swedish Broadcasting Corporation. SR was the organiser of the national contest and has strong traditions of leading several of its national winners, such as Abba and Carola, to the top of the Eurovision Song Contests.
According to SR, the lack of airplay of winner song 'La Voix' at P3, the ‘youth segment’ music channel, is simply a question of 'radio formatting'.
One of the major commercial channels, Radio RIX, similarly neglects the winner claiming the song is a typical ‘love or hate song’ that doesn’t fit into the profile of the channel.

High pitch female voices suppressed
Mezzo soprano, Malena Ernman, was voted winner of this years’ contest by Swedish viewers. She is a classically trained opera singer, who has performed with some of the world’s leading conductors. Her high pitch voice may be rather unusual to the contest, but commentator and blogger Gunilla Brodrej, Expressen, claims that that this shows the conflict between 'people’s choice’ and the 'power and domination of radio format controllers’.
"This is the revenge of the controllers. They did not get the power to decide the winner. So they don’t play the song," writes Brodrej.
Others point out that high pitch female voices historically have been suppressed.
Greek philosopher, Aristotle is quoted to say that ‘the high pitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition´.
Whether the lack of airplay of Malena Ernman should considered gender discrimination, censorship or a consequence of modern radio formatting is what the continuing discussion in Sweden is about.

Georgia’s winner song pulled out
Thus this year's Swedish Eurovision Song Contest has added another ‘scandal’ to its history. The organiser of the contest, EBU, has already banned Georgia’s winner song considered ‘mocking Putin’ – the Russian Prime Minister.
Will Malena Ernman win the hearts of the European audiences? To get to the final, Malena Ernman and ‘La Voix´ has to qualify at the first semi final in Moscow on 12 May 2009.