Eurovision 1976

The Eurovision Song Contest 1976 was the 21st edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in The Hague, Netherlands, following the country's victory at the with the song " Ding-a-dong" by Teach-In. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), the contest was held at the Nederlands Congrescentrum on 3 April 1976 and was hosted by 1957 Dutch Eurovision winner Corry Brokken.

Eighteen countries took part in the contest with , and opting not to return to the contest after participating the previous year. Malta would not return to the contest again until 1991. On the other hand, and returned to the competition, having been absent since 1972 and 1974 respectively.

won the contest this year with the song " Save Your Kisses for Me" by Brotherhood of Man. The song went on to become the biggest selling winning single in the history of the contest and won with 80.39% of the possible maximum score and an average of 9.65 of 12; a record under the voting system introduced in 1975.

Location

The Hague is the seat of government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the capital city of the province of South Holland. It is also the third-largest city in the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Located in the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is in the centre of the Haaglanden conurbation and lies at the southwest corner of the larger Randstad conurbation. The contest took place at the Congresgebouw (presently known as the '' World Forum''). The venue was constructed in 1969.

Format

As with the Dutch hosted contest of 1970, each song was introduced by a pre-recorded film of the performing artist on location in their home nation. Unlike the 1970 films, the Dutch broadcaster made all of the films themselves, sending a crew to each nation to capture the footage. Both the artists from Monaco and Luxembourg were filmed in their respective nations, despite again not being from the country they were representing. Each film was preceded by an animated insert featuring the flags of the eighteen participating nations and ended with a profile shot of the artists.

The interval act was The Dutch Swing College Band led by Peter Schilperoort, who performed live on the stage, intercut with brief interviews with the artists from France, Israel, Austria, Belgium and Spain backstage in the green room conducted by Hans van Willigenburg. Willigenburg asked each of the five artists which song they thought would win, but only French singer Catherine Ferry was willing to give a definite answer; correctly predicting the United Kingdom.

The scoring system introduced in the previous year's competition returned in 1976. Each jury voted internally and awarded 12 points to the highest scoring song, 10 to the second highest, then 8 to the third, and then 7 to 1 (from fourth to tenth best song, according to the jury). 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 was not established until 1980 (also held in The Hague).

Participating countries

Sweden, Malta and Turkey all decided not to participate this year, while Austria and Greece returned to the contest, making for eighteen participating countries.

Sweden did not enter the contest as broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) did not have enough money to host another contest if Sweden should win again. A new rule was therefore introduced that in the future each participating broadcaster would have to pay a part of the cost of staging the contest. As the author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor notes in his book ''The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History'', there had been public demonstrations in Sweden against the contest, which also played a part in SR's decision not to take part.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestral accompaniment.

* Alyn Ainsworth
* Mario Robbiani
* Les Humphries
* Matti Caspi
* Jo Plée
* Michel Bernholc
* Noel Kelehan
* Harry van Hoof
* Frode Thingnæs
*
* Ossi Runne
* Joan Barcons
* Maurizio Fabrizio
* Erich Kleinschuster
*
* Raymond Donnez
*
*

Returning artists

Participants and results

The following tables reflect the officially verified scores given by each jury, adjusted after the transmission. During the live broadcast, France failed to announce the 4 points they awarded to Yugoslavia, an error overlooked by the scrutineer, Clifford Brown. Thus in the live show, Norway were placed 17th and Yugoslavia 18th. After the broadcast, the scores were adjusted and the two nations swapped places, with Yugoslavia's score being adjusted from 6 to 10 points, moving Norway down to last place.

In terms of points gained as a percentage of maximum available, the winning UK entry from Brotherhood of Man is statistically the most successful winning Eurovision entry since the introduction of the 'douze points' scoring system inaugurated in 1975.As noted on a TOTP2 Eurovision special, the 1997 Katrina and the Waves entry Love Shine a light ranks third in the rankings of points achieved as a percentage of maximum available with 227 out of 288 or 78.81%, behind Nicole's " Ein bißchen Frieden" in 1982 (161 out of 204 or 78.92%) and Brotherhood of Man's " Save Your Kisses for Me" in 1976 (164 out of 204 or 80.39%). For comparison, Elena Paparizou's 2005 win took 230 points out of a possible 456, or only 50.04% while Portugal's dominant 2017 win from Salvador Sobral took 758 points from a possible 984 available, equating to 77.04%.

Detailed voting results

12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1976 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

# Ray Moore
# Michel Stocker
#
#
# Jacques Harvey
# André Hagon
# Brendan Balfe
# Dick van Bommel
#
# Irini Gavala
#
# José María Íñigo
# Rosanna Vaudetti
#
# Ana Zanatti
# Carole Chabrier
# Marc Menant
# Sandi Čolnik

Broadcasts

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Algeria, Hong Kong, Iceland, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.

See also

* OTI Festival 1976

Notes

References

External links

*

{{Portal bar, Music

1976
Music festivals in the Netherlands
1976 in music
1976 in the Netherlands
20th century in The Hague
April 1976 events in Europe
Events in The Hague
Music in The Hague