music.wikisort.org - Event

The Eurovision Song Contest 1976 was the 21st edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in The Hague, Netherlands, following the country's victory at the 1975 contest with the song "Ding-a-dong" by Teach-In. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS), the contest was held at the Nederlands Congrescentrum on 3 April 1976 and was hosted by 1957 Dutch Eurovision winner Corry Brokken.

Eurovision Song Contest 1976
Dates
Final	3 April 1976
Host
Venue	Nederlands Congresgebouw The Hague, Netherlands
Presenter(s)	Corry Brokken Hans van Willigenburg (green room)
Musical director	Jan Stulen
Directed by	Theo Ordeman
Executive supervisor	Clifford Brown
Executive producer	Fred Oster
Host broadcaster	Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS)
Interval act	The Dutch Swing College Band
Website	eurovision.tv/event/the-hague-1976
Participants
Number of entries	18
Debuting countries	None
Returning countries	Austria  Greece
Non-returning countries	Malta  Sweden  Turkey
Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1976
Vote
Voting system	Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 points to their 10 favourite songs
Nul points in final	None
Winning song	United Kingdom "Save Your Kisses for Me"
1975 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1977

Eighteen countries took part in the contest with Sweden, Malta and Turkey opting not to return to the contest after participating the previous year. Malta would not return to the contest again until 1991. On the other hand, Austria and Greece returned to the competition, having been absent since 1972 and 1974 respectively.

United Kingdom won the contest this year with the song "Save Your Kisses for Me" by Brotherhood of Man.[1] The 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 and an average of 9.65 of 12; a record under the voting system introduced in 1975.[2]

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 in 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

As with the Dutch hosted contest of 1970, each song was introduced by a pre-recorded film of the performing artist on location in their home nation. Unlike the 1970 films, the Dutch broadcaster made all of the films themselves, sending a crew to each nation to capture the footage. Both the artists from Monaco and Luxembourg were filmed in their respective nations, despite again not being from the country they were representing. Each film was preceded by an animated insert featuring the flags of the eighteen participating nations and ended with a profile shot of the artists.

The interval act was The Dutch Swing College Band led by Peter Schilperoort, who performed live on the stage, intercut with brief interviews with the artists from France, Israel, Austria, Belgium and Spain backstage in the green room conducted by Hans van Willigenburg. Willigenburg asked each of the five artists which song they thought would win, but only French singer Catherine Ferry was willing to give a definite answer; correctly predicting the United Kingdom.

The scoring system introduced in the previous year's competition returned in 1976. Each jury voted internally and awarded 12 points to the highest scoring song, 10 to the second highest, 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 (also held in The Hague).

Participating countries

Sweden, Malta and Turkey all decided not to participate this year, while Austria and Greece returned to the contest, making for eighteen participating countries.[1]

Sweden did not enter the contest as broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) did not have enough money to host another contest if Sweden should win again. A new rule was therefore introduced that in the future each participating broadcaster 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 not to take part.[3]

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestral accompaniment.[4][5]

Returning artists

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Fredi (Along with "The Friends")	Finland	1967
Anneli Koivisto (As part of "The Friends")	Finland	1971 (as part of Koivistolaiset)
Peter, Sue and Marc	Switzerland	1971
Sandra Reemer	Netherlands	1972
Corry Brokken (as presenter)		1956, 1957, 1958
Anne-Karine Strøm	Norway	1973 (as part of Bendik Singers) 1974 (Along with Bendik Singers)

Participants and results

The following tables reflect the officially verified scores given by each jury, adjusted after the transmission. During the live broadcast, France failed to announce the 4 points they awarded to Yugoslavia, an error overlooked by the scrutineer, Clifford Brown. Thus in the live show, Norway were placed 17th and Yugoslavia 18th. After the broadcast, the scores were adjusted and the two nations swapped places, with Yugoslavia's score being adjusted from 6 to 10 points, moving Norway down to last place.

In terms of points gained as a percentage of maximum available, the winning UK entry from Brotherhood of Man is statistically the most successful winning Eurovision entry since the introduction of the 'douze points' scoring system inaugurated in 1975.[N 1]

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Language[6][7]	Points	Place[8]
1	United Kingdom	Brotherhood of Man	"Save Your Kisses for Me"	English	164	1
2	Switzerland	Peter, Sue and Marc	"Djambo, Djambo"	English	91	4
3	Germany	Les Humphries Singers	"Sing Sang Song"	German, English	12	15
4	Israel	Chocolate, Menta, Mastik	"Emor Shalom" (אמור שלום)	Hebrew	77	6
5	Luxembourg	Jürgen Marcus	"Chansons pour ceux qui s'aiment"	French	17	14
6	Belgium	Pierre Rapsat	"Judy et Cie"	French	68	8
7	Ireland	Red Hurley	"When"	English	54	10
8	Netherlands	Sandra Reemer	"The Party's Over"	English	56	9
9	Norway	Anne-Karine Strøm	"Mata Hari"	English	7	18
10	Greece	Mariza Koch	"Panagia mou, Panagia mou" (Παναγιά μου, Παναγιά μου)	Greek	20	13
11	Finland	Fredi and the Friends	"Pump-Pump"	English	44	11
12	Spain	Braulio	"Sobran las palabras"	Spanish	11	16
13	Italy	Al Bano and Romina Power	"We'll Live It All Again"	English, Italian	69	7
14	Austria	Waterloo and Robinson	"My Little World"	English	80	5
15	Portugal	Carlos do Carmo	"Uma flor de verde pinho"	Portuguese	24	12
16	Monaco	Mary Christy	"Toi, la musique et moi"	French	93	3
17	France	Catherine Ferry	"Un, deux, trois"	French	147	2
18	Yugoslavia	Ambasadori	"Ne mogu skriti svoju bol" (Не могу скрити своју бол)	Serbo-Croatian	10	17

Detailed voting results

Detailed voting results[9][10]

		Total score	United Kingdom	Switzerland	Germany	Israel	Luxembourg	Belgium	Ireland	Netherlands	Norway	Greece	Finland	Spain	Italy	Austria	Portugal	Monaco	France	Yugoslavia
Contestants	United Kingdom	164		12	8	12	8	12	3	10	12	12	10	12	4	10	12	10	7	10
	Switzerland	91	12		5	4	1	7	1	6	10	2	7	4		8	7	4	6	7
	Germany	12		2			2	1						2					2	3
	Israel	77	6	7	3		7	5	4	2	7		8	1	10	6	2	1		8
	Luxembourg	17						6	6	5
	Belgium	68	7	6		1				4	6		12		8	3	8	8	5
	Ireland	54	10		1	3	3					8		5	12	2		6	3	1
	Netherlands	56		4	4	8	4	4	2		1	7		3	2	4	6	2		5
	Norway	7								3							4
	Greece	20						2					4		5		1		8
	Finland	44	2		6	6			5	1	4			6		7		7
	Spain	11	3									1			3			3	1
	Italy	69	1	8		2			12		3	10	6			1	10		10	6
	Austria	80	4	3	10	10	5	3	10	7	2	6	5	8				5		2
	Portugal	24					6					4	1		1				12
	Monaco	93	5	5	7	7	12	8	8	8	5		2	7	7	5	3			4
	France	147	8	10	12	5	10	10	7	12	8	5	3	10	6	12	5	12		12
	Yugoslavia	10		1	2							3							4

12 points

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

N.	Contestant	Nation(s) giving 12 points
7	United Kingdom	Belgium,  Greece,  Israel,  Norway,  Portugal,  Spain,   Switzerland
5	France	Austria,  Germany,  Monaco,  Netherlands,  Yugoslavia
1	Belgium	Finland
	Italy	Ireland
	Ireland	Italy
	Monaco	Luxembourg
	Portugal	France
	Switzerland	United Kingdom

Spokespersons

This section needs additional citations for verification. (July 2021)

Listed below is 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.

Broadcasts

This section needs additional citations for verification. (July 2021)

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.[1] In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Algeria, Hong Kong, Iceland, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.[5]

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS2	Ernst Grissemann [de]
	Hitradio Ö3	TBC
Belgium	RTB	French: Georges Désir [fr]
	BRT	Dutch: Luc Appermont	[11]
	RTB La Première	French: TBC
	BRT Radio 1	Dutch: Nand Baert [nl] and Jan Theys [nl]
Finland	YLE TV1	Vesa Nuotio [fi]
	Yleisohjelma	Erkki Melakoski [fi]
France	TF1	Jean-Claude Massoulier [fr]	[12]
	Radio France	Patrice Laffont
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	Werner Veigel
	Deutschlandfunk/Bayern 2	Wolf Mittler
Greece	ERT	Mako Georgiadou [el]
Ireland	RTÉ	Mike Murphy
	RTÉ Radio	Liam Devally
Israel	Israeli Television	No commentator
Italy	Rete 1 and Rai Radio 2	Silvio Noto
Luxembourg	RTL Télé Luxembourg	Jacques Navadic
	RTL	André Torrent [fr]
Monaco	Télé Monte Carlo	Hélène Vida [fr]
Netherlands	Nederland 2	Willem Duys	[13]
	Hilversum 3	Willem van Beusekom
Norway	NRK	Jo Vestly [no]
	NRK P1	Erik Heyerdahl [no]
Portugal	I Programa	Eládio Clímaco
	RDP Programa 1	Amadeu Meireles [pt]
Spain	Primera Cadena	José Luis Uribarri
Switzerland	TV DRS	German: Theodor Haller [de]
	TSR	French: Georges Hardy [fr]	[12]
	TSI	Italian: Giovanni Bertini
United Kingdom	BBC1	Michael Aspel	[5][14]
	BBC Radio 2	Terry Wogan	[5]
	BFBS Radio	Andrew Pastouna and Richard Astbury	[5]
Yugoslavia	TVB 1	Serbian: Milovan Ilić
	TVZ 1	Croatian: Oliver Mlakar
	TVL 1	Slovene: Tomaž Terček [sl]

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Denmark	DR TV	Claus Toksvig
Hong Kong	TVB Jade (delayed broadcast on 17 April 1976)	Unknown	[15]
	TVB Pearl (delayed broadcast on 5 and 6 April 1976)	Unknown	[16][17]
	RTV RTV-1 (delayed broadcast on 6 and 21 April 1976)	Unknown	[18][19]
	RTV RTV-2 (delayed broadcast on 5 and 17 April 1976)	Unknown	[18][15]
Iceland	Sjónvarpið	Jón Skaptason	[20]
Sweden	SR P3	Ursula Richter [sv]

See also

• OTI Festival 1976

Notes

References

External links

• Official website

На других языках

---

- [en] Eurovision Song Contest 1976

---

[ru] Евровидение-1976

Конкурс песни Евровидение 1976 — 21-й конкурс песни «Евровидение». Он прошёл 3 апреля 1976 года в городе Гаага (Нидерланды), в здании Дворца конгрессов.

---

---