broadcaster also announced that the Swiss entry for the 2004 contest would be selected through a national final. Switzerland has selected their entry for the Eurovision Song Contest through both national finals and internal selections in the past. Since 1998, the broadcaster has opted to organize a national final in order to select the Swiss entry. Before Eurovision Eurosong 2004 Eurosong 2004 was the Swiss national final that selected Switzerland's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2004. The national final was a collaboration between three broadcasters in Switzerland: the Swiss-German/Romansh broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen der deutschen und rätoromanischen Schweiz (SF DRS), the Swiss-French broadcaster Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) and the Swiss-Italian broadcaster Televisione svizzera di lingua italiana (TSI). The show took place on 6 March 2004 at the TSR Studio 4 in Geneva, hosted by Jean-Marc Richard and was televised on SF DRS with German commentary by Sandra Studer, TSI with Italian commentary by Roberta Foglia and TSR. Selection process The selection process took place in two stages before the finalists for the live show and ultimately the winner are selected. The first stage of the competition included SF DRS, TSR and TSI each conducting varying selections in order to determine the candidates they submitted for the second stage of the competition. Each broadcaster submitted four candidates to proceed to the second stage, the televised national final, where the winning artist and song was selected to represent Switzerland in Istanbul. The SF DRS selection involved a collaboration with Universal Music and the casting show MusicStar. 27 songs were submitted by the record label and music producers of MusicStar and an expert jury selected the top eight songs. The top four contestants of the first season of MusicStar each selected one of the eight songs as the SF DRS candidates for the national final. 53 artists were directly invited by TSR to submit their entries to the broadcaster. Following an internal selection from 26 entries ultimately received, four entries were selected as the TSR candidates for the national final. TSI directly invited 78 artists and composers to submit their entries. A jury panel evaluated the 35 entry submissions received and selected the four TSI candidates for the national final. Final The final took place on 6 March 2004. The twelve candidate songs in contention to represent Switzerland were performed and two rounds of regional televoting selected the winner. In the first round,