Final 3 April 1976 Conductor Jan Steulen Executive supervisor Clifford Brown | Presenter(s) Corry Brokken Director Theo Ordeman | |
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Venue Nederlands Congresgebouw
The Hague, Netherlands | ||
The Eurovision Song Contest 1976 was the 21st edition of the contest hosted by NOS and held in The Hague, Netherlands. The arena for the event was the Nederlands Congrescentrum. Teach-In's victory in Stockholm the previous year gave The Netherlands the right to host the contest for the third time. The Contest was won by Brotherhood of Man, who sang "Save Your Kisses for Me" in English, representing the United Kingdom.
Contents
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 of 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
The scoring system introduced in the previous year's competition returned in 1976. Each jury gave 12 points to the best song, 10 to the second best, 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.
Participating countries
Sweden, Malta and Turkey withdrew from this contest reducing the number of participating countries down to eighteen from the previous competitions record of nineteen countries that took part. Austria and Greece returned to the contest.
Sweden withdrew from the contest, as the broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) did not have enough money to host another contest if Sweden won again. A new rule was therefore introduced that in the future each broadcaster participating 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 to withdraw. The same book also notes that the victorious 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; a record under the voting system introduced in 1975.
Malta, having selected Enzo Guzman with the song "Sing Your Song, Country Boy" to represent them, then withdrew from the contest for undisclosed reasons, as the singer has confirmed. Malta would not return to the competition until 1991. The entry from Greece aroused controversy as it was about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The previous year Greece had withdrawn from the contest in protest over this matter. This year it was Turkey's turn to withdraw.
Liechtenstein attempted to submit an entry to the contest, but as they had no broadcasting service of their own, they were not allowed to. Their entry would have been "Little Cowboy" by Biggi Bachmann.
Conductors
Each performance had a conductor who maestro the orchestra.
Returning artists
Four artists returned to the contest in 1976. Fredi who represented Finland in 1967, Sandra Reemer returned having represented Netherlands in 1972, Peter, Sue and Marc also returned having represented Switzerland in 1971, and finally Anne-Karine Strøm represented Norway again having last done so in 1974; she repeated her finishing result by coming last once more.
12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:
International broadcasts and voting
The table below shows 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.
Television commentators
Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.