Eurovision Song Contest 1975

Eurovision Song Contest 1975
The Eurovision Song Contest 1975 was the 20th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Stockholm, Sweden, following the country's victory at the with the song "Waterloo" by ABBA. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster (SR), the contest was held at on 22 March 1975, and was hosted by Swedish television director Karin Falck. It was the first time that the contest had taken place in Sweden.
Nineteen countries participated in the contest, beating the previous record of eighteen, that was first set in the 1965 edition. France and Malta returned after their one-year and two-year absences, respectively. Turkey made its debut, while Greece decided not to enter after its debut the year prior.
The winner of the contest was the Netherlands who won with the song "Ding-a-dong", performed by Teach-In, written by Will Luikinga and Eddy Ouwens, and composed by Dick Bakker. The country would not win again until .
Location
The contest took place in Stockholm, the capital and largest city of Sweden, which has long been one of the country's cultural, media, political, and economic centres as well as the most populated urban area in Scandinavia.
The venue for the contest was (or Stockholm International Fairs in English). The main building is in Älvsjö – a southern suburb of Stockholm Municipality. It was constructed in 1971 and holds 4,000 people.
Participating countries
Nineteen countries took part in the contest; As a result of Turkey competing in the competition for the very first time, Greece decided not to enter after its 1974 debut in protest at the Turkish participation due to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus that had occurred the year before. Meanwhile, France and Malta returned to the contest after having been absent for one and two years, respectively .
Returning artists
Format
To introduce each song, all the artists were recorded on videotape painting a portrait of themselves during the rehearsal period, incorporating their nation's flag into the illustration. Some artists included their backing artists in the painting, others chose only to paint the lead singer.
This year a new scoring system was implemented. Each country would be represented by a jury of 11 members, at least half of whom had to be under the age of 26. Each jury member had to award every song a mark of between 1 and 5 points, but could not vote for their own nation's entry. The votes were cast immediately after the song was performed and collected by the adjudicator straight away. After the last song was performed, the jury secretary added up all the votes cast and awarded 12 points to the song with the highest score, 10 to the second highest score, then 8 to the third, and so forth down to 1 point for the song ranked 10th. The 12–1 points system remained in use until . Unlike today, the points were not given in order (from 1 up to 12), but in the order the songs were performed. The current procedure of announcing the scores in ascending order, beginning with 1 point, was not established until 1980.
Contest overview
Spokespersons
Each country nominated a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1975 contest are listed below.
José María Íñigo
Sven Lindahl
Ray Moore
Detailed voting results
12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:
Broadcasts
Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers.
Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast via Intervision to Eastern European countries, and in Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan, Jordan and South Korea. A planned broadcast in Chile by TVN was prevented by , following pressure from the Swedish Musicians' Union in opposition to the military dictatorship in the country.
Notes
References
External links
1975
Music competitions in Sweden
1975 in music
1975 in Sweden
1970s in Stockholm
March 1975 events in Europe