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), who agreed to stage the event after Israel, having won in both 1978 and 1979, declined to host it for a second successive year. The contest was held at the Nederlands Congresgebouw on Saturday 19 April 1980 and was hosted by Dutch actress Marlous Fluitsma, although each song was introduced by a presenter from the participating nation (in some cases, this was the same person providing the commentary).

Eurovision Song Contest 1980
Dates
Final19 April 1980
Host
VenueNederlands Congresgebouw
The Hague, Netherlands
Presenter(s)
Musical directorRogier van Otterloo
Directed byTheo Ordeman
Executive supervisorFrank Naef
Executive producerFred Oster
Host broadcasterNederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS)
Interval actThe Dutch Rhythm Steel and Show Band with The Lee Jackson Dancers
Websiteeurovision.tv/event/the-hague-1980
Participants
Number of entries19
Debuting countries Morocco
Returning countries Turkey
Non-returning countries
Participation map
  •      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1980
Vote
Voting systemEach country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Nul points in finalNone
Winning song Ireland
"What's Another Year"

Nineteen countries took part in the contest this year with Monaco and previous year's winner Israel deciding not to participate in the contest and Turkey returning. Morocco notably made its first and, so far, only appearance as well.

The winner was Ireland with the song "What's Another Year" by Johnny Logan and written by Shay Healy.[1][2]

Location
Nederlands Congresgebouw - host venue of the 1980 contest.

Israel, the winner of the 1979 contest, declined to host it for the second time in a row, as the IBA could not fund another international production, and the Israeli government turned down a request to extend the IBA budget. The European Broadcasting Union also set the broadcast on the same day as the Yom HaZikaron holiday, which meant Israel decided not to participate at all, marking the first and only time that the previous year's winner did not even compete. After Spain, the 2nd-place winner of 1979, and reportedly the UK, both declined to host, the Netherlands finally agreed to host the show in a small-scale production. According to Yair Lapid, son of Tommy Lapid who was then the IBA director general, Lapid called his counterpart at NOS and convinced him to take the "undesired honour", when he realised that the extra cost could paralyse the regular work of the IBA.[3] This remains the last time the previous year's winning country did not host the contest the year after.

The contest took place in The Hague at the Congresgebouw (presently known as the World Forum). The venue was constructed in 1969 and had previously hosted the contest in 1976.

Format
Katja Ebstein during rehearsals
Maggie MacNeal during rehearsals

The venue that had hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1976, Congresgebouw, was again chosen to stage the contest. Various parts of the opening sequence and stage of the 1976 festival were reused. 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 from each nation introducing the entries. Apart from this, the presenter, Marlous Fluitsma, except for the voting, did not make the presentation in English or French, which means that the presentation was made almost entirely in Dutch. NOS spent just US$725,000 on staging the show.

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 UK, Ireland, Norway and the Netherlands, each in their own language.

Australian-born Johnny Logan representing Ireland was the winner of this Eurovision with the song "What's Another Year". This was Ireland's second time winning the competition, having 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.

Germany were runners-up this year. They would finish in second place again the following year, finally winning in 1982. Germany would go on to finish second again in 1985 and 1987, making the 1980s their most successful Eurovision Song Contest decade. After two relatively poor placings the previous years, United Kingdom returned to form by coming third.

Song presenters

Each song was introduced by a presenter from the national country.[4] A few countries used their commentators as presenters, with Turkey's radio commentator and the TV commentators of Denmark, Sweden and Finland being utilised for this role. All the introductions were made in the language in which the song was performed, with the exception of Ireland which was introduced in Irish. The UK presenter was incorrectly identified in the on screen caption as 'Noel Edmunds'.

Voting

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, countries 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 unique telephone to speak to the nineteen jury spokespersons, although the phones were simply props and were not connected.

Participating countries

After Israel announced its non-participation, Morocco entered into the contest instead. Monaco also withdrew from the contest, and would not return until 2004.

Conductors

With the exception of Belgium, each performance had a conductor who directed the orchestra.[5][4] It marked the only contest to feature a Black conductor conducting an entry, that being Italy's conductor Del Newman.

Returning artists
Artist Country Previous year(s)
Paola del Medico   Switzerland 1969
Katja Ebstein  Germany 1970, 1971
Maggie MacNeal  Netherlands 1974 (part of Mouth & MacNeal)

Results
Draw Country Artist Song Language[6][7] Place[8] Points
01  Austria Blue Danube "Du bist Musik" German 8 64
02  Turkey Ajda Pekkan "Pet'r Oil" Turkish 15 23
03  Greece Anna Vissi and the Epikouri "Autostop" (Ωτοστόπ) Greek 13 30
04  Luxembourg Sophie and Magaly "Papa Pingouin" French 9 56
05  Morocco Samira Bensaïd "Bitaqat Hub" (بطاقة حب) Arabic 18 7
06  Italy Alan Sorrenti "Non so che darei" Italian 6 87
07  Denmark Bamses Venner "Tænker altid på dig" Danish 14 25
08  Sweden Tomas Ledin "Just nu!" Swedish 10 47
09   Switzerland Paola "Cinéma" French 4 104
10  Finland Vesa-Matti Loiri "Huilumies" Finnish 19 6
11  Norway Sverre Kjelsberg and Mattis Hætta "Sámiid ædnan" Norwegian[lower-alpha 1] 16 15
12  Germany Katja Ebstein "Theater" German 2 128
13  United Kingdom Prima Donna "Love Enough for Two" English 3 106
14  Portugal José Cid "Um grande, grande amor" Portuguese[lower-alpha 2] 7 71
15  Netherlands Maggie MacNeal "Amsterdam" Dutch 5 93
16  France Profil "Hé, hé M'sieurs dames" French 11 45
17  Ireland Johnny Logan "What's Another Year" English 1 143
18  Spain Trigo Limpio "Quédate esta noche" Spanish 12 38
19  Belgium Telex "Euro-Vision" French 17 14

Scoreboard
Johnny Logan performing his winning song "What's Another Year"
Voting results[9][10]
Total score
Austria
Turkey
Greece
Luxembourg
Morocco
Italy
Denmark
Sweden
Switzerland
Finland
Norway
Germany
United Kingdom
Portugal
Netherlands
France
Ireland
Spain
Belgium
Contestants
 Austria 6413451456463341041
Turkey 233128
Greece 30512243184
Luxembourg 5611463787838
Morocco 77
Italy 8726231086274121221010
Denmark 25426715
Sweden 478101065521
Switzerland 104625738212101076101222
Finland 651
Norway 154623
Germany 12881031012757210812105127
United Kingdom 106758810121043775686
Portugal 71454106821815674
Netherlands 931212612331082412153
France 453721141354365
Ireland 143101271127128121212568712
Spain 384786562
Belgium 143110

12 points

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

N. Contestant Nation(s) giving 12 points
7  Ireland Belgium,  Denmark,  Germany,  Greece,  Norway,   Switzerland,  United Kingdom
4  Netherlands Austria,  France,  Luxembourg,  Turkey
3  Germany Italy,  Netherlands,  Spain
2   Switzerland Finland,  Ireland
1  Italy Portugal
 Turkey Morocco
 United Kingdom Sweden

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1980 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

  1.  Austria – Jenny Pippal
  2.  Turkey – Başak Doğru
  3.  Greece – Niki Venega
  4.  Luxembourg – Jacques Harvey
  5.  Morocco – Kamal Irassi
  6.  Italy – Mariolina Cannuli
  7.  Denmark – Bent Henius
  8.  Sweden – Arne Weise
  9.   Switzerland – Michel Stocker[11]
  10.  Finland – Kaarina Pönniö[12]
  11.  Norway – Roald Øyen[13]
  12.  Germany – TBC
  13.  United Kingdom – Ray Moore[4]
  14.  Portugal – Teresa Cruz
  15.  Netherlands – Flip van der Schalie
  16.  France – Fabienne Égal
  17.  Ireland – David Heffernan
  18.  Spain – Alfonso Lapeña
  19.  Belgium – Jacques Olivier

Broadcasts

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
Country Broadcaster(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Austria FS2 Günther Ziesel [14]
Hitradio Ö3 Walter Richard Langer
 Belgium RTBF1 French: Jacques Mercier
BRT TV1 Dutch: Luc Appermont
RTBF La Première French: Marc Danval
BRT Radio 1 Dutch: Herwig Haes
 Denmark DR TV Jørgen de Mylius
DR P3 Erik Wiedemann
 Finland YLE TV1 Heikki Harma and Aarre Elo
 France TF1 Patrick Sabatier
France Inter Julien Lepers
 Germany Deutsches Fernsehen Ado Schlier
Deutschlandfunk/hr3 Roger Horné
 Greece ERT Mako Georgiadou
Proto Programma Dimitris Konstantaras
 Ireland RTÉ 1 Larry Gogan
RTÉ Radio 1 Pat Kenny
 Italy Rete 2 Michele Gammino
 Luxembourg RTL Télé Luxembourg Jacques Navadic
RTL André Torrent
 Morocco TVM TBC
 Netherlands Nederland 2 Pim Jacobs
Hilversum 1 Willem van Beusekom
 Norway NRK Knut Aunbu
NRK P1 Erik Heyerdahl
 Portugal RTP1 Isabel Wolmar
 Spain TVE1 Miguel de los Santos
 Sweden SVT TV1 Ulf Elfving
SR P3 Kent Finell
  Switzerland TV DRS German: Theodor Haller [15]
TSR French: Georges Hardy [16]
TSI Italian: Giovanni Bertini
 Turkey Ankara Television Bülend Özveren
Radyo 3 Şebnem Savaşçı
 United Kingdom BBC1 Terry Wogan [4][17]
BBC Radio 2 Steve Jones [4]
BFBS Radio Andrew Pastouna [4]
Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries
Country Broadcaster(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Yugoslavia TVB 2 Serbo-Croatian: Milovan Ilić
TVZ 1 Serbo-Croatian: Oliver Mlakar
TVL 1 Slovene: Tomaž Terček

Notes
  1. Although the song was performed in Norwegian, the title and sentence in the lyrics "Sámiid ædnan" is in Northern Sami.
  2. Also contains words in Italian, French, German and English

References
  1. "Eurovision 1980 Results: Voting & Points". Eurovisionworld. Retrieved 2018-09-27.
  2. The Eurovision Song Contest, retrieved 2018-09-27
  3. Yair Lapid, "Memoires After my Death", Keter Books, Jerusalem 2010 (ISBN 978-965-07-1792-6), p. 239 (in Hebrew)
  4. Roxburgh, Gordon (2016). Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest. Volume Three: The 1980s. Prestatyn: Telos Publishing. pp. 39–55. ISBN 978-1-84583-118-9.
  5. "And the conductor is..." Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  6. "Eurovision Song Contest 1980". The Diggiloo Thrush. Retrieved 4 March 2012.
  7. "Eurovision Song Contest 1980". 4Lyrics.eu. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  8. "Final of The Hague 1980". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  9. "Results of the Final of The Hague 1980". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  10. "Eurovision Song Contest 1980 – Scoreboard". European Broadcasting Union. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  11. Baumann, Peter Ramón (OGAE Switzerland)
  12. "Selostajat ja taustalaulajat läpi vuosien? • Viisukuppila". Viisukuppila.fi. Retrieved 2012-08-10.
  13. Dyrseth, Seppo (OGAE Norway)
  14. Dellanoi, Dietmar (OGAE Austria)
  15. "Au Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson". Radio TV - Je vois tout. Lausanne, Switzerland: Le Radio SA. 17 April 1980.
  16. "Au Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson". Radio TV - Je vois tout. Lausanne, Switzerland: Le Radio SA. 17 April 1980.
  17. "Grand Final: 1980, 1980, Eurovision Song Contest". BBC.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.