Eurovision Song Contest 1980

The Eurovision Song Contest 1980 was the 25th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in The Hague, Netherlands, and was organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), which agreed to stage the event after the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who won in both 1978 and 1979, declined to host the event for a second successive year. The contest was held at the Nederlands Congresgebouw on 19 April 1980 and was hosted by Dutch actress Marlous Fluitsma, although each song was introduced by a presenter appointed by each participating broadcaster (in some cases, this was the same person providing the commentary).
Nineteen countries took part this year, with Monaco and the previous year's winner Israel deciding not to participate, and Turkey returning. Morocco, notably, made its only appearance in the contest.
The winner was Ireland with the song "What's Another Year", sung by Johnny Logan and written by Shay Healy.
The Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), which won the festival in 1979, renounced its rights to host the event on 13 August 1979. The resignation in turn was the result of failed negotiations between the broadcaster and the Israeli parliament, after lawmakers did not authorize extra budget allocations for another international production hosted by IBA in a short space of time.
However, some days later rumours emerged that the resignation was actually the result of a controversy related to the date of the contest which had been provisionally confirmed for 19 April 1980, coinciding with the Yom HaZikaron holiday. The issue itself became controversial in Israel, thanks to a translation error in several documents sent by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to IBA at the end of 1979, when negotiations regarding the holding of the contest would begin. However, IBA tried to negotiate several times with the EBU the possibility of changing the date. However, none of them were fruitful and on 10 December 1979, the Israeli withdrawal was confirmed, following confirmation that the date chosen for the competition was 19 April 1980.
Following these incidents the EBU apologised to IBA, but even with their arguments, the date of the competition could not be changed, since the schedule for the participating broadcasters was tight and many of them already had their participation plans and programming schedules set up. This caused an atypical situation, because it was the only time in history that the country that had won the previous year could not defend its title.
Upon learning of the decision taken by the IBA, the EBU sent a public apology, claiming that "the lack of employees with knowledge of the Hebrew language has placed it in a strained situation". The issue was resolved when the Israeli broadcaster publicly accepted the apologies and confirmed that regardless of what happened in the 1980 contest, they would return in 1981.
Many years later, Yair Lapid, son of the late Tommy Lapid who was the general director of the IBA at the time, told in his father's biography, "that when his father discovered that holding the contest for two years in a row by IBA could result in unexpected bankruptcy. In December 1979, when this argument was presented to the other broadcasters, only NOS immediately accepted".
As news arrived, the EBU triggered emergency protocol and invited the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as reserve host broadcaster. Something that had already happened four other times (1960, 1963, 1972, and 1974). However, despite the good will, the BBC this time alleging the same financial problems that delayed the edition of 1977 ended up not taking over production. The third option was Televisión Española (TVE), due to the fact that the Spanish song had come in second place the previous year. However, along the period of Spanish transition to democracy already started, TVE also declined, despite the fact that the tourism board of the Costa del Sol was already working in a bid with the Convention Center of Torremolinos as the event's venue, trying to harness the area's touristic potential.
With negative responses from the reserve options, the EBU and IBA decided to offer the contest to any of the other fifteen broadcasters who had participated in the previous year's contest. Fourteen of them also gave negative responses to the situation, as no one expected Israel to give up. The situation only calmed down at the end of 1979, when Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) confirmed the date of the competition and its location, which was decided on 23 October. As it accepted the responsibility with little time to organize and produce the contest, with a small budget and reusing practically the same structure used four years earlier.
As in 1970 and 1976, the stage design was the work of Roland de Groot [nl]. The main platform was decorated with a five-step staircase and three curved horizontal panels, in front of which participants performed their songs. The technique included a series of geometric elements suspended by cables that accompanied each performance, transforming into totally different images accompanied by colored lights that also changed with each song.
Given the short time for production, the Dutch art team ended up opting to recycle several elements from the 1976 contest stage, but with different uses. They chose to rescue several pieces from sets from other productions by the broadcaster, a warehouse and also a scrapyard, observing the conditions of use. Recycling also involved the contest's visual identity, in the same way that the opening video was a reissue of the one used four years earlier.
After Israel announced its absence, Morocco entered into the contest instead for its only ever participation. Monaco also withdrew from the contest, and would not return until 2004.
Several of the performing artists had previously competed as lead artists representing the same country in past editions: Paola del Medico had represented Switzerland in 1969, Katja Ebstein had represented Germany in 1970 and in 1971, and Maggie MacNeal had represented the Netherlands in 1974 as part of Mouth and MacNeal.
The venue that had hosted the 1976 contest, the Congresgebouw, was again chosen to stage the contest. Because of the limited budget and time available, NOS decided to recycle several elements of the 1976 production such as several opening video sequences and many pieces and elements that were being used in other broadcaster shows since then. Again, Roland de Groot took charge of the design. As with the 1977 and 1978 contests, there were no pre-filmed postcards between the songs, with a guest presenter appointed by each participating broadcaster introducing the entries. Apart from this, the presenter, Marlous Fluitsma practically presented the contest almost entirely in Dutch, with exceptions in the protocol parts and in the voting where she used French and English according to tradition. Thus, the broadcaster host spent only NLG 900.000 on organizing the contest, from the overall amount of NLG 1.5 million. At least 300 journalists have covered the event.
Each of the 19 contestants was presented by a presenter from that country appointed by each participating broadcaster, in some cases the same person providing the commentary. Each of the songs was introduced in the same language as the song was performed, with the exception of the Irish introduction, which was made in Irish, whereas the song was performed in English. The British presenter was incorrectly identified in the onscreen caption as 'Noel Edmunds' and the Finnish presenter as 'Heikki Haarma'.
During the live interval act performance of San Fernando by The Dutch Rhythm Steel and Show Band with the Lee Jackson dancers, Hans van Willigenburg intercut brief interviews with some of the participants backstage in the green room, speaking to the singers from Germany, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and the Netherlands, each in their own language.
Australian-born Johnny Logan, representing his parents' country Ireland, was ultimately crowned the winner with the song "What's Another Year". This was Ireland's second victory in the competition, having previously won in 1970 with "All Kinds of Everything", coincidentally also held on Dutch soil. It was also the first time that a male solo artist (albeit with backing vocals) had won the contest since Udo Jürgens won for Austria in 1966.
Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for its respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1980 contest are listed below.
The scoring system implemented in 1975 remained the same; each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs. However this year for the first time, spokespersons were required to declare their scores in ascending order, 1,2,3 etc. This change made for the added excitement of waiting for each country to award their highest 12 points at the end of each voting round.
For the voting sequence, Marlous Fluitsma used a different telephone to speak to each of the nineteen jury spokespersons, although the phones were simply props and were not connected.
Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:
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. The contest was also reportedly broadcast in Cyprus, Israel, Iceland, and Jordan; in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union via Intervision; and in Cuba, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, with an estimated audience of 450 million viewers. The contest was reportedly broadcast via radio in countries including Belgium, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.