Swedish music competition
 2002 was the 42nd edition of the Swedish music competition , which was organised by (SVT) and took place over a seven-week period between 19 January and 1 March 2002. The winner of the competition was Afro-dite with the song "Never Let It Go", who represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 2002, where she came eight with 72 points. All shows were hosted by Kristin Kaspersen and Claes Åkesson.
Format.
This was the first year that a heat format had been used for the competition; but also, the first where songs were permitted in languages other than Swedish, resulting in a significant number of English language songs, and two songs with lyrics in Spanish. "Ett vackert par", composed by Py Bäckman and Micke Wennborn was disqualified before the competition, when the dance band Grönwalls had performed it on the radio before the contest (not knowing it was supposed to enter). Nanne Grönvall and Nick Borgen was thought as possible performers. It was replaced by "Sista andetaget".
The contest consisted of four heats of eight participants each. The songs that came in the first two placed qualified directly to the final while the ones that came third and fourth qualified to the Winners' Choice round. There, eight songs competed and they were judged by a jury of previous Melodifestivalen winners which individually ranked each song. Then the average was used to determine the final placement. The first two songs qualified for the final.
Contest overview.
Heat 1.
The first heat took place on 19 January 2002 at the Tipshallen in Växjö. 2,653,000 viewers watched the heat live. A total of 403,993 votes were cast, with a total of collected for .
Heat 2.
The second heat took place on 26 January 2002 at the Himmelstalundshallen in Norrköping. 2,318,000 viewers watched the heat live. A total of 311,381 votes were cast, with a total of collected for .
Heat 3.
The third heat took place on 2 February 2002 at the Nordichallen in Sundsvall. 2,188,000 viewers watched the heat live. A total of 219,474 votes were cast, with a total of collected for .
Heat 4.
The fourth heat took place on 9 February 2002 at the Lugnet in Falun. 2,971,000 viewers watched the heat live. A total of 332,500 votes were cast, with a total of collected for .
Winners' Choice.
The Winners' Choice round took place on 22 February 2002 at the SVT Broadcasting House in Stockholm. 2,037,000 viewers watched the show live.
Final.
The final took place on 1 March 2002 at the Stockholm Globe Arena in Stockholm. 3,720,000 viewers watched the show live. A total of 926,318 votes were cast, with a total of collected for .
References.
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