Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005

Song.Null.Fünf was the national final that selected Austria's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2005. The competition took place on 25 February 2005 at the ORF studios in Vienna, hosted by Mirjam Weichselbraun and Christian Clerici and broadcast on ORF 1.

Five acts with two candidate songs each competed in the competition where the winner was selected by regional televoting. Viewers were able to vote via telephone or SMS, with the voting results of each of the nine federal states having an equal stake in the final result. The tenth set of votes were the overall voting result, which had a weighting equal to the votes of a single federal state.[1]

Five artists were nominated by a team of music professionals.[2] The five artists selected to compete in the national final were revealed on 5 January 2005. Among the competing artists, Alf Poier previously represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, placing sixth.[3] The five acts provided two candidate songs each for the national final.

The final took place on 25 February 2005. Ten songs competed and regional televoting selected "Y así" performed by Global Kryner as the winner.

This pre-selection was very controversial for being unfair due to the voting system. When the results were eventually published, overall votings had more voters than any federal state else, but gave just as many points as the voters from each state did. Actual winner Alf Poier was annoyed about this way of unfairness.[1]

The same year, Austria were among the countries that broadcast Congratulations, the 50th anniversary special celebrating Eurovision's history. Although no Austrian entry was among the fourteen competing to be named the best Eurovision song of all time, they were permitted to vote as ORF was broadcasting the show live (with commentary by Elisabeth Engstler and Ernst Grissemann). Several Austrian entries were included in the show's clip montages; in particular, Udo Jürgens' "Merci, Chérie" was included in a montage of contest winners (at the time, it was Austria's only Eurovision victory, but they would go on to win again nine years later and hosted the sixtieth contest). In both rounds, the Austrian vote awarded twelve points to 1974 champions ABBA with "Waterloo," which would end the night being declared the best Eurovision entry of all time.