“How much is seven in France?”: A Eurovision Special Continued

Had they sung last instead of first, poor Karin
might have had an easier time with the translations

Voting in the Eurovision is the most exciting part of the night, or at least it is until one song trounces the rest into submission with a dozen countries still to vote. Anyway, the awarding of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and the famous "douze points" was introduced in 1975. However, the points were awarded in the order in which the songs were performed, rather than going in order from a jury's 10th favourite to most favourite. This must have made for a number of anti-climactic results, as the winning entry that year, "Ding-A-Dong" by Teach-In of the Netherlands, was sung first, and got the top score from six countries. The night's host, Karin Falck, doubtless the only one confused by the odd method of awarding 12 votes, then 2, then 6, then 4, as opposed to going in order from tenth favourite to most favoured. Having struggled between English and French translations through the voting, she hit a blank when the United Kingdom gave seven votes to Sweden, and couldn't remember the French for seven, prompting her to ask the scrutineer from the European Broadcasting Union "How much is seven in France?". The awarding of votes in numerical order, rather than the order in which songs were performed, was first done in 1980.

André Claveau: the 1958 Danish jury
really liked his effort, except one guy,
 who thought it was only "alright"

Before 1975, a number of scoring systems were used, though the most popular one involved each country having ten jurors on a panel, with each juror giving a vote to their favourite song. Of course, that theoretically meant one jury could give all ten of its votes to a country, or one jury could give a single vote to ten countries. This never happened, but in 1958, Denmark gave nine of its ten votes to France while, in the same Contest, Sweden gave four votes to Switzerland and one vote to each of Italy, France, Denmark, Belgium, West Germany and Austria. In 1970, Belgium helped Ireland to victory by giving Dana's "All Kinds of Everything" nine votes.

From 1964 to 1966, each jury voted privately, as normal, but only awarded points to the top three songs, with the favourite song getting five points, the second favourite getting three, and the third favourite getting one. However, if the jury liked fewer than three songs, they could vote for just two songs, and award their favourite song six points and their second favourite three. If the ten jurors only liked one song, that song get nine points. This confusing structure meant that, in 1964, the maximum number of points any song could get was supposed to be 75, but it could be 90, or it could be 135. The old system was brought back in 1968.


A major problem of this system was that, because one country could get a huge share of one jury's votes and few votes elsewhere while another could get a small number of votes from everybody, it was quite possible for a number of countries to share top spot at the end of the voting because of fragmented votes, especially in an era when fewer than twenty countries entered the Contest. The European Broadcasting Union, with the mindset of an American sports organiser, failed to think that anything like a tie could happen and had no tiebreaker should one ever happen. By fluke, there had been sole winners from 1956 (possibly, the results of that Contest have never been released) to 1968, but the EBU got its fingers badly burned in 1969, when no fewer than four of the sixteen participants tied for first place. An urban legend, but a rather brilliant one, goes that the host of that year's Contest, Laurita Valenzuela, asked the EBU's vote scrutineer, Clifford Brown, what would happen in the event of a tie. Brown replied that such a thing had never happened before, and never would. Oops. 

Just asking for karma to bite back

Despite the farce created by the voting structure, it was retained for the 1970 Contest, but at least a tie-breaker had been devised, where any joint leaders had to perform their song again, with the neutral juries voting for a favourite on a show of hands. The system finally bit the dust after this Contest, with a little help from Belgium, whose jury ensured Ireland's first victory by giving Dana nine of their ten votes.

It's unknown if the Eurovision inspired
 the camera staff on University Challenge 

The EBU managed to devise a different voting system in time for the 1971 Contest, which saw each country send two jurors to the Contest, voting for each song immediately after it had been sung, before appearing on screen at the end of the singing to verify their scores. One of the two jurors from each country was aged between 16 and 25, and the other was aged over 25, with at least ten years age difference between them. The jurors were supposed to give a score from one to five to each song, but a major flaw quickly became apparent. The freedom to give any score they liked meant some juries were very stingy with their results, possibly with the intention of improving their own country's likelihood of success. In 1971, the highest score awarded to any song by the Luxembourg jury was five points (out of a possible ten), while Malta gave no higher than a six in 1972. To be fair, there's probably little evidence that any jury actively sought to sabotage the voting in favour of their own delegation, because each contest saw a raft of generous nines and tens from the adjudicators. 

While the 1971 and 1972 Contests were uncontroversial, with clear winners, the 1973 edition showed the inefficiency of the voting method, with the thirty-four jurors (from seventeen participating countries) deciding a very tight Contest, with six points between the top three countries (Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom). Matters weren't helped by one of the Swiss jurors, who decided to become a star of the show by saluting the audience while displaying his results (from 8:00 of this video), especially if they were good scores, to the disbelief of the Yugoslavian judge next to him. With so few people deciding such a close Contest, it was decided that a new voting system was required. The ten jurors with one vote each got a final encore in 1974, before it was replaced by the system which has been retained to the present day.

More Than a Song and Dance: A Eurovision Special

A bit of a break from the politics and the banks, this week I'm writing about the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual exhibition and celebration of the surreal, the bizarre, the grammatically dodgy and the occasional talent. An excellent RTÉ programme last week discussed some of the "secret history" of the Eurovision, by focusing not so much on the music, but on the role the Contest played in a cultural war between the West and the Communist block during the Cold War. I'm not going to rehash information that was shown on television last week, but I thought I'd reveal a few things about the Contest you might not know.

Pick a date, any date.

It's a tradition that the Eurovision takes place on a Saturday night, but this only started in 1961. Before that, the Contest took place on whatever evening was convenient for the host broadcaster. The first Contest, in 1956, took place on Thursday, May 24, and was really a radio affair; since most Europeans didn't have television, the emphasis was on radio entertainment, though there was cameras to present it to those who did have television sets. The 1957 and 1958 Contests were on Sundays, March 3 and March 16, respectively, while the 1959 Contest took place on a Wednesday, March 11, and the 1960 Contest was performed on a Tuesday, March 29. The 1961 Contest was on Saturday, March 18, and Saturday night has been the night of broadcast since 1963.

Nunzio Gallo in 1957: his ode to the strings of his
guitar went on a bit too long for the EBU

The rules of the Contest state that no song may be longer than three minutes, because of time constraints. This wasn't always the case, and the 1957 Italian entry, "Corde Della mia Chitarra" ("Strings of My Guitar") lasted five minutes and nine seconds. Although it's a rather nice song, the European Broadcasting Union eventually decided that such lengthy efforts would not be welcomed, and limited the amount of time songs could take.

The United Kingdom has hosted the Contest on eight occasions, despite only winning the Contest five times. Only one has been hosted outside of England, the 1972 edition, which was in Edinburgh. Like the 1960 and 1963 editions, the BBC hosted despite the UK not winning the previous Contest. The BBC became known as a dependable substitute in the event that a winning country was unable to stage the competition because of limited space or funds, but hasn't stepped in as substitute host since 1972, though only one Contest has been held by a country other than the previous winner since, when the Netherlands hosted the 1980 edition after Israel, having won the 1978 and 1979 Contests, revealed that it could not afford to host such a major event for a second consecutive year.

In 1996, as pretty much everyone in Ireland knows, Eimear Quinn won the Contest, Ireland's fourth success in five years and a record seventh overall. Aside from being the last time Ireland won the Contest (probably to the immense relief of the accountants at RTÉ, since that's meant RTÉ hasn't had to host the Eurovision in the last fifteen years), there was a unique political involvement. For the first, and only, time, politicians around Europe sent good luck messages to their country's delegation, which was played immediately before the song. While the likes of Switzerland and Greece sent low-ranking diplomats to help waste time create a spirit of friendship, Taoiseach John Bruton did the honours for Ireland, as can be seen from 1:14 on this video. His voice wished good luck, but his eyes were praying that someone else would win.

Leon's techno effort failed to impress

1996 is also the only time that Germany hasn't appeared in the final. Due to the sheer number of countries that wanted to enter following the end of the Cold War and the break-ups of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the European Broadcasting Union decided to have a qualifying round, which wasn't televised, to whittle the 29 entrants (not including host Norway) down to a more manageable 22. In what could only be described as dubious decision-making, national juries made their call by listening to audio taped performances of the songs, and voting as normal, but without the results being released. Despite being a major contributor to the EBU, Germany was eliminated. Eliminating one of your biggest cash cows probably unnerved the EBU, which decided a few years later to guarantee participation in the final for Germany, as well as the United Kingdom, France and Spain. Italy are also assured passage to the final when the enter; this year is their first appearance in the Contest since 1997.