Eurovision Song Contest 1969

Eurovision Song Contest 1969
ESC 1969 logo.png
Dates
Final29 March 1969
Host
VenueTeatro Real
Madrid, Spain
Presenter(s)Laurita Valenzuela
Musical directorAugusto Algueró
Directed byRamón Díez
Executive supervisorClifford Brown
Host broadcasterTelevisión Española (TVE)
Interval act"La España diferente" film
Websiteeurovision.tv/event/madrid-1969 Edit this at Wikidata
Participants
Number of entries16
Debuting countriesNone
Returning countriesNone
Non-returning countries Austria
Participation map
  • Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969France in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Monaco in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Yugoslavia in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Portugal in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 1969Denmark in the Eurovision Song ContestAustria in the Eurovision Song ContestA coloured map of the countries of Europe
    About this image
         Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1969
Vote
Voting systemTen-member juries distributed ten points among their favourite songs.
Nul points in finalNone
Winning song
1968 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1970

The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 was the 14th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Madrid, Spain, following the country's victory at the 1968 contest with the song "La, la, la" by Massiel. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Televisión Española (TVE), the contest was held at the Teatro Real on 29 March 1969 and was hosted by Spanish television presenter and actress Laurita Valenzuela.

Sixteen countries took part in the contest with Austria deciding not to participate this year.

At the close of voting, four countries were controversially declared joint-winners: the United Kingdom with "Boom Bang-a-Bang" by Lulu, Spain with "Vivo cantando" by Salomé, the Netherlands with "De troubadour" by Lenny Kuhr, and France with "Un jour, un enfant" by Frida Boccara. It was the first time in the history of the contest that a tie had occurred, and as there was no tiebreaker rule in place at the time, all four countries were declared joint winners. France's win was their fourth, thus making it the first country to win the contest four times. The Netherlands' win was their third. Spain and the United Kingdom each won for the second time, with Spain becoming the first country to win the Eurovision Song Contest twice in a row.

Location

Teatro Real, Madrid – host venue of the 1969 contest.

The venue selected to host the 1969 contest was the Teatro Real, an opera house located in Madrid. The theatre reopened in 1966 as a concert theatre and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. The stage featured a metal sculpture created by surrealist Spanish artist Amadeo Gabino [es].

Format

The surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was responsible for designing the publicity material for the 1969 contest.

It was the first time that the contest resulted in a tie for first place, with four countries each gaining 18 votes. Since there was at the time no rule to cover such an eventuality, all four countries were declared joint winners. This caused an unfortunate problem concerning the medals due to be distributed to the winners as there were not enough to go round, so that only the singers received their medals on the night: the songwriters, to some disgruntlement, were not awarded theirs until some days later. It was the second contest to be filmed and transmitted in colour, even though TVE did not have colour equipment at the time. It had to rent colour TV cameras from the ARD German network. In Spain itself the broadcast was seen in black and white because the local transmitters did not support colour transmissions. The equipment for archiving the broadcast did not arrive in time, so TVE only had a black and white copy of the contest, until a colour copy was discovered in the archives of the NRK.

Participating countries

Austria was absent from the contest, officially because they could not find a suitable representative, but it was rumoured that they refused to participate in a contest staged in Franco-ruled Spain. Wales wanted to debut with Welsh language broadcaster BBC Cymru, and also made a national selection called Cân i Gymru, but in the end it was decided they would not participate in the competition – their participation was rejected because Wales is not a sovereign state. Only the BBC has the exclusive right to represent the United Kingdom.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who led the orchestra. These are listed below.

Returning artists

Artist Country Previous year(s)
Siw Malmkvist  Germany 1960 (for  Sweden)
Romuald  Luxembourg 1964 (for  Monaco)
Simone de Oliveira  Portugal 1965
Kirsti Sparboe  Norway 1965, 1967
Louis Neefs  Belgium 1967

Participants and results

R/O Country Artist Song Language Points Place
1  Yugoslavia Ivan and 4M "Pozdrav svijetu" (Поздрав свијету) Serbo-Croatian 5 13
2  Luxembourg Romuald "Catherine" French 7 11
3  Spain Salomé "Vivo cantando" Spanish 18 1
4  Monaco Jean Jacques "Maman, maman" French 11 6
5  Ireland Muriel Day and the Lindsays "The Wages of Love" English 10 7
6  Italy Iva Zanicchi "Due grosse lacrime bianche" Italian 5 13
7  United Kingdom Lulu "Boom Bang-a-Bang" English 18 1
8  Netherlands Lenny Kuhr "De troubadour" Dutch 18 1
9  Sweden Tommy Körberg "Judy, min vän" Swedish 8 9
10  Belgium Louis Neefs "Jennifer Jennings" Dutch 10 7
11   Switzerland Paola del Medico "Bonjour, Bonjour" German 13 5
12  Norway Kirsti Sparboe "Oj, oj, oj, så glad jeg skal bli" Norwegian 1 16
13  Germany Siw Malmkvist "Primaballerina" German 8 9
14  France Frida Boccara "Un jour, un enfant" French 18 1
15  Portugal Simone de Oliveira "Desfolhada portuguesa" Portuguese 4 15
16  Finland Jarkko and Laura "Kuin silloin ennen" Finnish 6 12

Detailed voting results

Although neither jury made any errors in their announcements, scrutineer Clifford Brown asked both the Spanish and the Monegasque juries to repeat their scores. No adjustments were made to the scoring as a result of the repetition.

Lenny Kuhr's dress
Detailed voting results
Total score
Yugoslavia
Luxembourg
Spain
Monaco
Ireland
Italy
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Sweden
Belgium
Switzerland
Norway
Germany
France
Portugal
Finland
Contestants
Yugoslavia 5 1 1 3
Luxembourg 7 1 3 1 1 1
Spain 18 1 2 3 1 3 1 3 2 2
Monaco 11 2 4 2 2 1
Ireland 10 1 1 1 3 1 3
Italy 5 1 1 1 1 1
United Kingdom 18 2 4 3 1 5 1 1 1
Netherlands 18 2 1 3 1 4 1 6
Sweden 8 1 3 1 3
Belgium 10 2 3 1 2 2
Switzerland 13 2 3 2 1 1 2 2
Norway 1 1
Germany 8 3 2 1 1 1
France 18 1 2 4 4 2 1 1 1 2
Portugal 4 2 1 1
Finland 6 1 1 1 1 1 1

Spokespersons

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1969 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.

  1.  Yugoslavia – Helga Vlahović
  2.  Luxembourg – TBC
  3.  Spain – Ramón Rivera
  4.  Monaco – TBC
  5.  Ireland – John Skehan
  6.  Italy – Mike Bongiorno
  7.  United Kingdom – Colin Ward-Lewis
  8.  Netherlands – Leo Nelissen [nl]
  9.  Sweden – Edvard Matz [sv]
  10.  Belgium – Eugène Senelle
  11.   Switzerland – Alexandre Burger [fr]
  12.  Norway – Janka Polanyi [no]
  13.  Germany – Hans-Otto Grünefeldt [de]
  14.  France – Jean-Claude Massoulier [fr]
  15.  Portugal – Maria Manuela Furtado
  16.  Finland – Poppe Berg [fi]

Broadcasts

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Tunisia, in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union via Intervision, and in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
Country Broadcaster(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Austria FS1 Willy Kralik [de]
 Belgium BRT Dutch: Jan Theys [nl]
RTB French: Paule Herreman
 Finland TV-ohjelma 1, Yleisohjelma Aarno Walli [fi]
 France Deuxième Chaîne ORTF Pierre Tchernia
 Germany Deutsches Fernsehen Hans-Joachim Rauschenbach [de]
 Ireland RTÉ Gay Byrne
RTÉ Radio Kevin Roche
 Italy Secondo Programma Renato Tagliani [it]
 Luxembourg Télé-Luxembourg Jacques Navadic
 Monaco Télé Monte Carlo Pierre Tchernia
 Netherlands Nederland 1 Pim Jacobs
 Norway NRK Sverre Christophersen [no]
NRK P1 Erik Heyerdahl [no]
 Portugal I Programa Henrique Mendes
 Spain Primera Cadena José Luis Uribarri
Radio Nacional Miguel de los Santos [es]
 Sweden Sveriges TV, SR P3 Christina Hansegård [sv]
  Switzerland TV DRS German: Theodor Haller [de]
TSR French: Georges Hardy [fr]
TSI Italian: Giovanni Bertini
 United Kingdom BBC1 David Gell
BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2 Pete Murray
 Yugoslavia Televizija Beograd Serbo-Croatian: Miloje Orlović [sr]
Televizija Zagreb Serbo-Croatian: Mladen Delić
Televizija Ljubljana Slovene: Tomaž Terček [sl]

Coordinates: 40°25′06″N 3°42′37″W / 40.41833°N 3.71028°W / 40.41833; -3.71028


This page was last updated at 2022-08-31 17:13 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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