Eurovision Song Contest (original) (raw)
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual showcase of songs, running since May 24, 1956 and broadcast on television (but mainly radio in the first few years) throughout Europe. More recently, it has also been shown in other parts of the world and on the internet. The contest's name comes from the Eurovision TV Distribution Network, which is run by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The song contest can be entered by any member of the EBU which includes countries such as Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and just recently Georgia which are not in Europe.
Based on the San Remo Music Festival, the first Eurovision Song Contest was the brainchild of the European Broadcasting Union. The first contest took place in 1956, when seven of the original invitees participated (the other three were disqualified for late entry). The original participants were France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Switzerland. They were joined the next year by the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Austria ("the Procrastinators"), and in 1959 by Monaco.
History
The 2002 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday 26 June, 2002, hosted by Annely Peebo, an opera singer, and Marko Matvere, an actor.
For the 2002 edition, the Spanish TVE created an reality show Operaci�n Triunfo that showed the selection and training of unknown singers. At the end, one of them would be elected by the public to represent the country in the contest. The format was an enormous success in Spain and is being exported. One of the first of these exports was the Irish You're A Star, run on Radio Telif�s �ireann over Winter 2002/'03 for the 2003 Contest.
The 2003 Eurovision Song Contest was held in Riga, Latvia on Saturday 24 May, 2003, hosted by Marie N, the singer who won the ESC 2002, and Renars Kaupers, a singer whose group competed in the ESC 2000.
Up until 2003 entry to the Eurovision song contest also requires the country to have performed with a reasonable amount of success for the previous few years. Because of the size of their contribution to the EBU budget, France, Germany, Spain and the UK automatically qualify regardless of how poorly their songs perform.
At the beginning of 2003 the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decided to make the Eurovision Song Contest a two day event as from 2004. This means that the previous restrictions for countries to participate will be dropped. Any EBU member country will be able to participate in any given year.
Rules
Number of songs
Initially each country was allowed to submit two three-minute (or less) songs, performed by inhabitants of the respective country. By the
1960s, entries were limited to one song per country (participation in the contest had almost doubled), and the songs had to be sung in one of the national languages of the country. Participation continued to grow through the 1980s, and by the turn of the century the rules had been changed several times to both limit the number of finalists and to allow for the new independent republics that arose from the former Eastern bloc nations.
Performers
Current rules state, that countries are only allowed to have six performers on stage and that performers must be aged 16 or more, on the 31st of December in the year of the contest. It is worth noting that due to the current rules there is no restriction on the nationality or the language of the performers, allowing the Australian Olivia Newton-John, for instance, to represent the UK in the contest, and Canadian Celine Dion to represent Switzerland, amongst many others. Many small countries sing in English to reach broader audiences, though in bigger countries this is sometimes looked upon as unpatriotic. If a EBU country does not broadcast the Song Contest they are automatically disqualified for the next year.
Judging
An international process
The winner of the contest is decided by each country assigning points (currently 1 to 8, 10 and 12) to their favourite ten entries. In some countries, phone polls are held during the telecast in order to decided how the country should award its points. Countries are not allowed to vote for themselves. The conductors do a round of satellite connections to the speaker for each country jury, that proceeds to read their votes. Then the conductors repeats them in English and French, using this stereotyped structure: "Country name, number points. Nom du pays, nombre points".
Nul points
Since each of the entrant countries casts a series of votes, it is only rarely that a song has failed to have any votes at all cast for it. This is known to English speakers as nul points, after the Eurovision practice of reading out the results in both English and French.
- In 1978, Jahn Teigen achieved nul points for his song for Norway.
- In 2003 the UK contestants, Jemini, scored nul points for their entry. This caused slight consternation in the UK (see the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 entry for more details).
Hosts
Hosting the Eurovision Song Contest is an honour accorded the winners of the previous year -- although it means that the winner's home broadcaster actually incurs heavy expenses as a result of winning and this has led to suggestions that some nations deliberately choose substandard acts so as to ensure they do not win. In the early 1990s the Irish broadcaster RTE was reported to have experienced considerable financial difficulties through having to host the contest four times in five years. Many pop singers and groups have begun the path to fame with a win at the contest. However
ABBA and Celine Dion are the only contest winners to have had significant international success.
Music
The musicians and songs selected for the contest tend towards very conventional "bubblegum" pop, and voting patterns often show more about the ethnic prejudices and politics of various European nations than to the quality of the music. For instance, British and French entries tend to do very poorly in each other's poll. Turkey and Greece generally snub each other. Turkish acts poll well in Germany due to the large population of Turkish expatriates there. Greece and Cyprus usually award each other maximum points. Many viewers of the contest view the event as a combination of camp entertainment and a musical train wreck (a fact played upon in the English-language broadcast with the sardonic BBC commentary of Terry Wogan) and a subculture of Eurovision song contest drinking games and the like has evolved in some countries.
Winners
| Year | Country | Song | Performer | Wikipedia |
|---|
Refrain
Net Als Toen
Corry Brokken
Dors mon amour
Andre Claveau
Een beetje
Teddy Scholten
Tom Pilibi
Jacqueline Boyer
Nous les amoureux
Jean-Claude Pascal
Un premier amour
Isabelle Aubret
Dansevise
Grethe & J�rgen Ingmann
Non ho l'et�
Gigliola Cinquetti
Poupee de cire, poupee de son
Mercie Cherie
Puppet on a string
La, la, la ...
Massiel
1969#
Vivo cantando
1969#
Un jour, un enfant
Frida Boccara
1969#
De troubadour
Lennie Kuhr
1969#
Boom bang a bang
All kinds of everything
Un banc, un arbre, une rue
Severine
Apres toi
Tu te reconnaitras
Anne Marie David
Waterloo
Ding-a-dong
Teach-In
Save Your Kisses for Me
L'oiseau et l'enfant
Marie Myriam
A-ba'ni-bi
Izhar Cohen
Hallelujah
Milk and Honey with Gali
What's another year
Johnny Logan & Choir
Making your mind up
Ein bißchen Frieden
Nicole
Si la vie est cadeau
Corinne Hermes
Diggi-loo-diggi-ley
Herrey's
La det swinge
Bobbysocks
J'aime la vie
Hold me now
Ne partez pas sans moi
Rock Me, Baby
Riva
Insieme 1992
Fångad av en stormvind
Why me
Linda Martin
In your eyes
Niamh Kavanagh
Rock'n Roll kids
Paul Harrington / Charlie McGettigan
Nocturne
Secret Garden
The voice
Eimear Quinn
Love shine a light
Katrina and The Waves
Diva
Take me to your heaven
Charlotte Nilsson
Fly on the wings of love
Everybody
Tanel Padar & Dave Benton
I wanna
Everyway That I Can
?
?
?
Note: (#) In 1969 four countries were joint winners as there was no rule for a tie.
As of 2003, the most successful country in the song contest has been Ireland who have won seven times. Close behind them with five wins are France, Luxembourg and the UK.
Junior Eurovision Song Contests
Denmark originally held a song contest for children in 2000 then it organised a Nordic Children's Eurovision. The EBU saw clips of the show and liked it so decided to create an official Children's Eurovision.
From 2003 there will also be held an Eurovision Song Contest for children called Junior ESC in Denmark.
Intervision Song Contest
The countries of the former Eastern bloc were organising between 1977 and 1980 their own song contest called Intervision Song Contest. The Intervision Network organised it in Sopot, Poland, changing the name of the older song festival - the Sopot International Song Festival.