Eurovision Song Contest 1963

Location

The BBC was willing to host the contest instead of the previous year's winner France, as was the case in 1960, 1972 and 1974 with previous winning broadcasters that could not afford to organise a contest.

The host venue was the BBC Television Centre, White City, London, which opened in 1960. It is one of the most readily recognisable facilities of its type having appeared as the backdrop for many BBC programmes. It remained to be one of the largest such facilities in the world until it closed in March 2013.

Format

Two studios (TC3 and TC4) were used: one for the mistress of ceremonies Katie Boyle, the audience, and the scoreboard; the other for the performers and the orchestra accompanying them. Unusually, a boom microphone (normally used for drama and comedy shows) was employed - the viewer doesn't see this, so it appears as if the artists were miming to their vocals. This was not the case, but this innovation was to create a new look for the contest.

Voting controversy

One controversy this year was during the voting. When it was Norway's turn to announce their votes, the spokesman in Oslo did not use the correct procedure in that the song number, followed by the name of the country, should have been announced before awarding the points. Katie Boyle asked Norway to repeat their results, but the Norwegian spokesman asked Katie to return to them after all the other results were in. When Katie went back to Norway again the votes had mysteriously altered, thus changing the outcome of the contest and giving the victory to Norway's neighbours Denmark at Switzerland's expense. In fact, the Norwegian spokesman had not given the correct votes on the first occasion. Monaco was also asked to do their voting a second time as initially Monaco give one point to both the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. However, when Katie Boyle went back to Monaco to receive the votes again Monaco's one vote to Luxembourg was efficiently discarded (although this did not have any effect on the positions of the countries). It has also been speculated as to whether the juries were indeed on the end of a telephone line or in the actual studio given how clearly their voices could be heard as opposed to sounding as though they were being redirected through a telephone line.

Participating countries

All countries which participated in the 1961 and 1962 contests, returned for a third consecutive year, with no new countries making a début, nor any returning or withdrawing nations this particular year.

Conductors

The participating conductors were:

Returning artists

This year saw the return of just one artist, with Ronnie Carroll representing the United Kingdom for the second consecutive year.

Scoreboard

Each country had 20 jury members who awarded their five favourite songs 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 points in order. All those points would then be added up and the five song with the most points got 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 votes in order.

5 points

Below is a summary of all 5 points in the final:

International broadcasts and voting

The table below shows the order in which votes were cast during the 1963 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country. Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. Details of the commentators and the broadcasting station for which they represented are also included in the table below.