Country Netherlands Selected song "One More Night" | Selected entrant Esther Hart | |
Selection process Nationaal Songfestival 2003 Selection date(s) Semifinals:
1 February 2003
8 February 2003
15 February 2003
22 February 2003
Final:
1 March 2003 Final result 13th, 45 points
Marcel Bezençon Artistic Award 2003 | ||
The Netherlands was represented by Esther Hart, with the song '"One More Night", at the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest, which took place in Riga, Latvia on 24 May. 32 songs took part in the Dutch preselection, which consisted of four semi-finals in February, followed by the final on 1 March.
Contents
Semi-finals
Four semi-finals were held in February 2003 to select the eight songs to progress to the Dutch final. The semi-finals were held at the Hart van Holland venue in Nijkerk and were hosted by Harm Edens. Eight songs competed in each semi-final and were voted on by a combination of an expert jury and telephone/SMS. The song placed first by the jury and that placed first by televoting qualified for the final. In the event that both the jury and the televoters placed the same song first (as happened in all but the third semi-final), the song placed second in the televote also qualified.
Final
The national final was held on 1 March at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam, hosted by Loes Luca. Voting was a 50/50 split between televoting/SMS and an expert jury. Hart emerged the comfortable victor with Gordon in second place. On the day after the contest, a technical problem came to light, whereby a significant number of SMS votes had been either not counted at all or attributed to the wrong song. A revised scoring table was issued to correct the mistakes. The only change in placement was that Bert Heerink & Manou, who had originally placed seventh, were moved up to fifth, with Mango Nuts and Mary Amora correspondingly dropping a place.
At Eurovision
On the night of the final Hart performed 14th in the running order, following Israel and preceding the United Kingdom. At the close of the voting "One More Night" had received 45 points from nine countries (the highest being 10 from Russia), placing the Netherlands 13th of the 26 entries. The 12 points from the Dutch televote were awarded to contest winners Turkey.