Melodifestivalen (; literally "The Melody Festival") is an annual
music competition organised by
Swedish public broadcasters
Sveriges Television (SVT) and
Sveriges Radio (SR). It determines the country's representative for the
Eurovision Song Contest, and has been staged almost every year since 1959. Since 2000, the competition has been the most popular television programme in Sweden; it is also broadcast on radio and the Internet. In 2012, the semifinals averaged 3.3 million viewers, and over an estimated four million people in Sweden watched the final, almost half of the Swedish population.