The history of the Eurovision T Song Contest began as the
brainchild of Marcel Bezençon
of the EBU. The contest was based on
the Italian Sanremo Music Festival and
was designed to test the limits of live
television broadcast technology.
The first contest took place on 24 May 1956,
when seven nations participated. With a live
orchestra, the norm in the early years, and
simple sing-a-long songs on every radio
station, the Contest grew into a true pan-
European tradition.
In the beginning, it was obvious for the
participants that they should sing in their
country's national language. However, as the
Swedish entry in 1965, Absent Friend, was
sung in English, the EBU set very strict rules
on the language in which the songs could be
performed. National languages had to be used
in all lyrics. Song writers across Europe soon
tagged onto the notion that success would
only come if the judges could understand the
content, resulting in such entries as Boom-
Bang-A-Bang and La La La. In 1973, the rules
on language use were relaxed, and in the
following year ABBA would win with Waterloo.
Those freedom of language rules would be
soon reversed in 1977, to return with apparent
permanent status in the 1999 contest.
The voting systems used in the Contest have
changed throughout the years. The modern
system has been in place since 1975. Countries
award a set of points from 1 to 8, then 10 and
finally 12 to other songs in the competition —
with the favourite song being awarded 12
points, the famous douze points.
Historically, a country's set of votes was
decided by an internal jury, but in 1997 five
countries experimented with televoting, giving
members of the public in those countries the
opportunity to vote en masse for their
favourite songs. The experiment was a success
and from 1998 onwards all countries were
encouraged to use televoting wherever
possible. Nowadays members of the public
may also vote by SMS. Whichever method of
voting is used—jury, telephone or
SMS—countries may not cast votes for their
own songs.
The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s led
to a sudden increase in numbers, with many
former Eastern Bloc countries queuing up to
compete for the first time. This process has
continued to this day with more and more
countries joining. For this reason, in 2004 the
Semi-Final format was introduced by the EBU
which turned into two semi-finals for the
Eurovision Song Contest in 2008. Now all
countries, except the Big Five – France,
Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom
– together with the host country, have to go
through a Semi-Final to qualify for the Final
where the favourite song of the European TV
viewers is selected, for the 58th time in 2013.
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