Eurovision Song Contest 1975

Stockholmsmässan, Stockholm – host venue of the 1975 contest.

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.[2][3]

The venue for the contest was Stockholmsmässan (or Stockholm International Fairs in English). The main building is in Älvsjö – a southern suburb of Stockholm Municipality for which the building got its nickname. It was constructed in 1971 and holds 4,000 people.

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 2015. The jury spokesperson then announced the ten scores in the order the songs were presented when called upon by the hostess. The hostess Karin Falck several times confused the new system with questions like "How much is seven in France?"

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. This scoring system remained in use until 1996, although the number of jurors varied (it was 11 from 1975 to 1987, and 16 from 1988 to 1997) and the scores they awarded each song increased to 10 rather than 5. In from 1997, some juries were replaced by televotes and from 1998, all countries were encouraged to televote when possible.

In the 2009 final and the 2010 semi-finals, the juries were reintroduced to provide 50% of the scores. Despite these changes in how the points were decided, the 'douze points' scoring system remained in place from 1975–2015. In 2016 it was altered to each country providing two separate sets of points, however, modelled after the former model.[4]

Teach-In leaving from Amsterdam Airport for the Eurovision Song Contest 1975

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 .[1]

The Portuguese entry "Madrugada" was an unabashed celebration of the Carnation Revolution, during which the country's 1974 Eurovision entry had played a pivotal practical role. According to author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor in his book The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History, the Portuguese performer had to be dissuaded from wearing his Portuguese army uniform and carrying a gun onto the stage.[5] Some competitors (notably Portugal and Yugoslavia) opted to perform their songs in English for the rehearsals heard by the judges, but in their native tongue at the final. Others, such as Belgium and Germany, opted for a mix of their own language and English.

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Ellen Nikolaysen	Norway	1973 (as part of Bendik Singers) 1974 (as part of Bendik Singers)
John Farrar (as part of The Shadows)	United Kingdom	1973 (as backing singer for Cliff Richard)

Participants and results

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language[8][9]	Points	Place[10]
1	Netherlands	Teach-In	"Ding-a-dong"	English	152	1
2	Ireland	The Swarbriggs	"That's What Friends Are For"	English	68	9
3	France	Nicole Rieu	"Et bonjour à toi l'artiste"	French	91	4
4	Germany	Joy Fleming	"Ein Lied kann eine Brücke sein"	German, English	15	17
5	Luxembourg	Géraldine	"Toi"	French	84	5
6	Norway	Ellen Nikolaysen	"Touch My Life (with Summer)"	English	11	18
7	Switzerland	Simone Drexel	"Mikado"	German	77	6
8	Yugoslavia	Pepel in kri [n 1]	"Dan ljubezni"	Slovene	22	13
9	United Kingdom	The Shadows	"Let Me Be the One"	English	138	2
10	Malta	Renato	"Singing This Song"	English	32	12
11	Belgium	Ann Christy	"Gelukkig zijn"	Dutch, English	17	15
12	Israel	Shlomo Artzi	"At Va'Ani" (את ואני)	Hebrew	40	11
13	Turkey	Semiha Yankı	"Seninle Bir Dakika"	Turkish	3	19
14	Monaco	Sophie	"Une chanson c'est une lettre"	French	22	13
15	Finland	Pihasoittajat	"Old Man Fiddle"	English	74	7
16	Portugal	Duarte Mendes	"Madrugada"	Portuguese	16	16
17	Spain	Sergio and Estíbaliz	"Tú volverás"	Spanish	53	10
18	Sweden	Lasse Berghagen and the Dolls	"Jennie, Jennie"	English	72	8
19	Italy	Wess and Dori Ghezzi	"Era"	Italian	115	3

Notes:

1. Pepel in kri were credited as Ashes and Blood

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.[1][14]

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.[7][15] A planned broadcast in Chile by TVN was prevented by Sveriges Radio, following pressure from the Swedish Musicians' Union in opposition to the military dictatorship in the country.[16][17]

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster	Channel(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Belgium	BRT	BRT	Unknown	[18][19][20][21]
		BRT Radio 1	Unknown
	RTB	RTB	Unknown	[19][20][22]
Finland	YLE	TV1	Heikki Seppälä	[16][23][24]
		Rinnakkaisohjelma	Erkki Melakoski
France	TF1		Georges de Caunes	[22][25][26]
Germany	ARD	Deutsches Fernsehen	Werner Veigel	[20][27][28][29]
Ireland	RTÉ	RTÉ	Mike Murphy	[30][31][32][33]
		RTÉ Radio	Unknown
Israel	IBA	Israeli Television	Unknown	[34][35]
Italy	RAI	Programma Nazionale, Secondo Programma	Silvio Noto	[36][37]
Luxembourg	CLT	RTL Télé-Luxembourg	Unknown	[22][38]
Malta	MTPBS	TVM, Radio Malta	Norman Hamilton	[39][40][41]
Monaco	Télé Monte-Carlo		Unknown	[42]
Netherlands	NOS	Nederland 2	Willem Duys	[20][43][44]
Norway	NRK	NRK Fjernsynet, NRK	John Andreassen	[45][46]
Portugal	RTP	I Programa	Unknown	[47][48]
Spain	TVE	TVE 1	José Luis Uribarri	[49][50][51]
Sweden	SR	TV1	Åke Strömmer	[13][23][46][52]
		SR P3	Ursula Richter
Switzerland	SRG SSR	TV DRS	Unknown	[25][27][53][54][55]
		TSR	Georges Hardy
		TSI[lower-alpha 1]	Unknown
		RSR 1	Robert Burnier
Turkey	TRT	TRT Televizyon	Unknown	[56][57]
United Kingdom	BBC	BBC1	Pete Murray	[7][58][59][60][61]
		BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2	Terry Wogan
	BFBS	BFBS Radio	Richard Astbury	[7]
Yugoslavia	JRT	TV Koper-Capodistria	Unknown	[37][62][63][64]
		TV Ljubljana 1	Unknown
		TV Zagreb 1	Unknown

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster	Channel(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	ORF	FS2	Ernst Grissemann	[27][65]
Denmark	DR	DR TV	Per Møller Hansen	[66]
Greece	EIRT	EIRT	Mako Georgiadou	[67]
Hungary	MTV	MTV1[lower-alpha 2]	Unknown	[68]
Iceland	RÚV	Sjónvarpið[lower-alpha 3]	Dóra Hafsteinsdóttir	[69]

Intelligence reports at the time pointed out the festival as a possible target for a terrorist attack by the Red Army Faction which forced the organizers to tighten security considerably. The attack struck the West German embassy in Stockholm instead about a month later (see West German embassy siege).

The Swedish left movement protested against the contest and its commercial aspect. At first the criticism was directed towards SR for the huge amount of money they spent on the contest but soon the protests developed into a movement against commercial music overall. When the Eurovision Song Contest took place an alternative festival was organized in another part of Stockholm where anybody who wanted could perform a song. Sillstryparn's entry "Doin' the omoralisk schlagerfestival" (Doin' the immoral Eurovision festival) with lyrics criticizing the commercialised nature and lacking moral integrity of Eurovision, was the most popular song from the alternative event. In the autumn of 1975 SR informed that Sweden would not participate in the 1976 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest due to the high costs that came with hosting the show. The rules later changed so that the costs were split more equally between the participating broadcasters. In the end, SR did not broadcast the 1976 contest. A concert film starring Cornelis Vreeswijk aired in its place.

Swedish TV technicians refused to broadcast the festival to Chile, where TVN (an associate member of the EBU) had plans to air it.[70] The refusal was in protest to the military dictatorship that had been ruling the country since the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat led by Augusto Pinochet.[71]

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