Eurovision Song Contest 1988

The Eurovision Song Contest 1988 was the 33rd edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. The contest took place on 30 April 1988 in Dublin, Ireland, following the country's win at the previous 1987 edition. The presenters were Pat Kenny and Michelle Rocca. The host broadcaster was Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ) which revamped the show's production style compared to its earlier editions, in order to appeal to a younger audience.

Eurovision Song Contest 1988
Dates
Grand final30 April 1988
Host
VenueRDS Simmonscourt Pavilion,
Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland
Presenter(s)
Musical directorNoel Kelehan
Directed byDeclan Lowney
Executive supervisorFrank Naef
Executive producerLiam Miller
Host broadcasterRaidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ)
Opening actJohnny Logan performing "Hold Me Now"
Interval actHothouse Flowers performing "Don't Go"
Websiteeurovision.tv/event/dublin-1988
Participants
Number of entries21
Debuting countriesNone
Returning countriesNone
Non-returning countries Cyprus
Vote
Voting systemEach country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Nul points Austria
Winning song  Switzerland
"Ne partez pas sans moi"

The winner was Switzerland with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi", performed by Canadian singer Céline Dion and composed by Atilla Şereftuğ with lyrics in French by Nella Martinetti. Switzerland beat the United Kingdom by just a point in the last vote to win the title. Twenty-one countries took part, after an initial plan of twenty-two, as Cyprus was disqualified for breaching the contest's rules by being published a few years earlier, in an attempt to represent the country at a prior edition of the contest. The Cypriot song had been drawn to be performed 2nd in the running order.

Location

RDS Simmonscourt – host venue of the 1988 contest.

Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Dublin is in the province of Leinster on Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey. Founded as a Viking settlement, the Kingdom of Dublin became Ireland's principal city following the Norman invasion. The city expanded rapidly from the 17th century and was briefly the second largest city in the British Empire before the Acts of Union in 1800. Following independence in 1922, Dublin became the capital of the Republic of Ireland.

The contest took place at the Simmonscourt Pavilion of the Royal Dublin Society, which was normally used for agricultural and horse shows. The same venue hosted the 1981 contest. The staging of the contest in Dublin in 1988 formed part of Dublin’s year long celebration of 1000 years since it was established by Scandinavian settlers in 988.

Format

Graphic design

Host broadcaster RTÉ employed Declan Lowney, who was notable for being a director of music videos and youth programming, as director for this edition, in order to revamp the contest to attract and sustain a younger audience. The traditional scoreboard was replaced with two giant Vidiwalls located on either side of the stage, which also projected live images of the performers from the green room where the competitors set during the votes announcements, and a new computer-generated scoreboard was used.

The stage itself, conceived by Paula Farrell under chief production designer Michael Grogan, was also the largest and most elaborate ever constructed for the Eurovision Song Contest. To compensate for the fact that the vast stage took up most of the room in what is really an average size exhibition hall, the director deliberately darkened the hall where the audience was located and refused to use wide angled shots of the audience, in order to create the illusion of the venue being bigger than it actually was.

The Postcards featured the participants doing things in Ireland from culture, to tradition, to sports or sightseeing.

Lowney was also the director of the show's interval act, introduced after the competing songs and before the votes announcement. The interval act was a video of the popular Irish rock group Hothouse Flowers, which was filmed in eleven countries around Europe and was the most expensive music video ever produced in Ireland at the time.

Voting

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point(s) for its top ten songs.

This edition features one of the closest and most fickle-ending votes in the history of the contest. With three countries left to vote, the UK was well in the lead with 133 points against Switzerland's 118. With the third last country, France, only awarding Switzerland one point, the UK looked certain of victory, as even if Switzerland scooped the two final 12s, the UK would only need to gather eleven points from three juries combined to be unbeatable. However, France didn't award the UK any points, and the following country, Portugal, gave the UK a meagre three points while giving the maximum 12 to Switzerland, making the contest blown open between the two countries until the end of the voting.

With the conclusion of voting from the penultimate jury, the UK was holding a five-point lead over Switzerland. As the final jury, that of Yugoslavia, began to award its points in the customary ascending order, a lot of excitement-sighs were heard from the audience to see how the two rivals for victory would fare. Switzerland was the first to be named with six points, edging it into a one-point lead over the UK. After earlier strong votes from most countries to the UK, it seemed highly likely that the UK would be given one of the higher remaining set of points. However as Yugoslavia announced its seven, eight, ten and twelve points, it transpired that it had awarded the UK no points at all (12 points from Yugoslavia went to France), [n 1] and Switzerland was left with its one-point lead to savour a dramatic triumph.

Conductors

Each performance had a conductor who was maestro to the orchestra, except for Iceland and Italy. Unlike in most years, the conductors took their bows after each song, not before.

Participants

Twenty-one countries took part, after an initial plan of twenty-two, as Cyprus was disqualified after it had already submitted an entry. Cypriot broadcaster CyBC had selected the song 'Thimame' sung by Yiannis Dimitrou, and at a late stage saw that the song was ineligible to represent them as it had been entered into the Cypriot selection for the 1984 Contest, where it had finished in 3rd place. This was classed as a breach of the Cypriot rules of selecting their entry at this time as well as an infringement of the Eurovision Song Contest rules. It was a very late decision as the song was already drawn to perform second in the contest, advertised in the Radio Times information about the preview programme of the contest, and appears as song number two in accordance to its initial performance draw, on the record release “Melodi Grand Prix 1988” – the compilation disc of the contest’s entries.

This was the second victory for Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest after winning its first edition in 1956, and the last time a song in French won the contest, the language having dominated the event in earlier years.

The contest helped launch an international career for two artists, the winner for Switzerland Céline Dion and Luxembourg’s representative Lara Fabian. French-Canadian Céline Dion was only famous in the French-speaking world at the time of the contest, shortly afterwards started recording songs in English.[1] Belgian-Canadian Lara Fabian started a successful career after the contest with becoming established in various countries worldwide, with a mainly French-sung repertoire.[1] The UK entry was written and composed by Julie Forsyth, the daughter of the entertainer Bruce Forsyth who was present. When interviewed afterwards he was particularly annoyed at the Dutch jury not having given a vote to the UK, as they had done some work there.

The contest saw the return of seven artists who had participated in its previous editions: Denmark's Kirsten & Søren represented the country in 1984 and 1985, Finland's Boulevard represented the country in 1987 as Vicky Rosti's backing group, Israel's Re'uven Gvirtz and Yehuda Tamir, winners of the contest in 1979 as part of Milk and Honey returned to Eurovision as backing singers for Yardena Arazi, who represented the country in 1976 as part of the group Chocolat, Menta, Mastik. Arazi had hosted the contest in 1979,[n 2] Portugal's Dora represented the country in 1986, Sweden's Tommy Körberg represented the country in 1969, and Turkey's MFÖ represented the country in 1985.

Results

Draw Country Artist Song Language[2][3] Place Points
01  Iceland Beathoven "Þú og þeir (Sókrates)" Icelandic 16 20
02  Sweden Tommy Körberg "Stad i ljus" Swedish 12 52
03  Finland Boulevard "Nauravat silmät muistetaan" Finnish 20 3
04  United Kingdom Scott Fitzgerald "Go" English 2 136
05  Turkey MFÖ "Sufi" Turkish 15 37
06  Spain La Década "La chica que yo quiero (Made in Spain)" Spanish 11 58
07  Netherlands Gerard Joling "Shangri-La" Dutch 9 70
08  Israel Yardena Arazi "Ben Adam" (בן אדם) Hebrew 7 85
09   Switzerland Céline Dion "Ne partez pas sans moi" French 1 137
10  Ireland Jump the Gun "Take Him Home" English 8 79
11  Germany Maxi & Chris Garden "Lied für einen Freund" German 14 48
12  Austria Wilfried "Lisa Mona Lisa" German 21 0
13  Denmark Hot Eyes "Ka' du se hva' jeg sa'?" Danish 3 92
14  Greece Afroditi Frida "Clown" (Κλόουν) Greek 17 10
15  Norway Karoline Krüger "For vår jord" Norwegian 5 88
16  Belgium Reynaert "Laissez briller le soleil" French 18 5
17  Luxembourg Lara Fabian "Croire" French 4 90
18  Italy Luca Barbarossa "Vivo (Ti scrivo)" Italian 12 52
19  France Gérard Lenorman "Chanteur de charme" French 10 64
20  Portugal Dora "Voltarei" Portuguese 18 5
21  Yugoslavia Srebrna krila "Mangup" (Мангуп) Serbo-Croatian 6 87

Score sheet

Points allocated to the winning Song from Switzerland
Juries
Total score
Iceland
Sweden
Finland
United Kingdom
Turkey
Spain
Netherlands
Israel
Switzerland
Ireland
Germany
Austria
Denmark
Greece
Norway
Belgium
Luxembourg
Italy
France
Portugal
Yugoslavia
Contestants
Iceland 20144128
Sweden 5232858121310
Finland 33
United Kingdom 13615101210105710101065128123
Turkey 3741518846
Spain 58252681826684
Netherlands 70667726121257
Israel 8566463101523105310101
Switzerland 13771251010810410121084171126
Ireland 797232126476775452
Germany 488513566428
Austria 0
Denmark 921034112614412107126
Greece 1037
Norway 8858712718135734710
Belgium 55
Luxembourg 904101275121212268243
Italy 528478253285
France 6423822337351210112
Portugal 541
Yugoslavia 8712618712234124763

12 points

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

N. Contestant Nation(s) giving 12 points
3  Denmark  Austria
 France
 Netherlands
 Luxembourg  Finland
 Ireland
  Switzerland
  Switzerland  Germany
 Portugal
 Sweden
 United Kingdom  Belgium
 Italy
 Turkey
 Yugoslavia  Denmark
 Iceland
 Israel
N. Contestant Nation(s) giving 12 points
2  Netherlands  Greece
 Luxembourg
1  France  Yugoslavia
 Ireland  Spain
 Norway  United Kingdom
 Sweden  Norway

Commentators

Participating countries

Non-participating countries

Radio

Some participating countries did not provide radio broadcasts for the event; the ones who did are listed below.

Spokespersons

National jury members

The size of the national juries changed this year from 11 to 16 members, and this lasted until 1997.

  •  Iceland - Árni Gunnarsson, Ásgeir Guðnason, Davíð Sveinsson, Elín Þóra Stefánsdóttir, Ellý Þorðardóttir, Erla Björk Jónasdóttir, Guðrún Kristmannsdóttir, Hólmfríður Jónsdóttir, Jónas Engilbertsson, Jónína Bachmann, Kjartan Þor Kjartansson, Ólafur Egilsson, Sigrún Kristjánsdóttir, Sigurður Fanndal, Sigurður Ægisson, Þórdís Garðarsdóttir[4]
  •  Finland – Ilpo Hakasalo[27]
  •  United Kingdom – Nicola Chapman, Terry Clarke, Alfred Collet, Geoff Dennis, James Douglas, Alison Fox, Mike Goss, Carol Holroyd, Muir Johnson, Karen Marsden, Mavis Masters, Molly Roberts, Andrew Sidell, Renate Smith, Paul Tunnicliffe, Robert Unsworth
  •  SpainPepe Barroso (businessman), Paquita Torres (former model and Miss Europe), Mario Pardo (actor), Lola Forner (actress), José Coronado (actor), Analía Gadé (actress), Miguel Báez "El Litri" (bullfighter), Laura Valenzuela (actress and TV host, presenter of Eurovision Song Contest 1969), Antonio de Senillosa (writer), Cyra Toledo (fashion model), José Oneto (journalist), María Vidaurreta (PhD in Political Sciences and lecturer), Jorge Sanz (actor), Emma Suárez (actress), Caty Arteaga (dancer), Jaime Andrada (architect)
  •  Netherlands – Hans van den Berg, Bert Tuk
  •  Ireland - Bill Cleary
  •  Denmark – Anni Thorslund Larsen
  •  Greece – Alexandros Roussos

Notes

  1. Yugoslavia, as being the last jury to announce its votes, had caused the same situation to happen when after their voting UK lost to Spain by 1 point in the 1968 Contest.
  2. With this, she became the first person to compete in the contest after hosting an earlier edition; before her, there were few competitors that hosted later editions of the contest.

References

  1. "Eurovision Song Contest 1998". European Broadcasting Union official website – History by year section. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  2. "Eurovision Song Contest 1988". The Diggiloo Thrush. Retrieved 5 March 2012.
  3. "Eurovision Song Contest 1988". 4Lyrics.eu. Retrieved 16 September 2020.
  4. "Fór út með vinningsglampann í sólgleraugunum segir Sverrir Stormsker". Mbl.is. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  5. "Infosajten.com". Infosajten.com. Archived from the original on 18 July 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  6. "Selostajat ja taustalaulajat läpi vuosien? • Viisukuppila". Viisukuppila.fi. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  7. Eurovision Song Contest 1988 BBC Archives
  8. "FORO FESTIVAL DE EUROVISIÓN • Ver Tema - Uribarri comentarista Eurovision 2010". Eurosongcontest.phpbb3.es. Archived from the original on 17 March 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  9. "Welkom op de site van Eurovision Artists". Eurovisionartists.nl. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  10. "serge moissons : vidéo". serge-moisson.com. Retrieved 10 August 2019.
  11. "Eurovision Rewind/1988: festa Svizzera per un punto. E l'Italia…". eurofestivalnews.com. Retrieved 10 August 2019.
  12. "Eurovision Song Contest 1988". Ecgermany.de. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  13. Archived 24 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  14. "Forside". esconnet.dk. Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  15. "Η Δάφνη Μπόκοτα και η EUROVISION (1987-2004)". Retromaniax.gr. Archived from the original on 12 September 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  16. "Hvem kommenterte før Jostein Pedersen? - Debattforum". Nrk.no. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  17. Christian Masson. "1988 - Dublin". Songcontest.free.fr. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  18. Adriaens, Manu & Loeckx-Van Cauwenberge, Joken. Blijven kiken!. Lannoo, Belgium. 2003 ISBN 90-209-5274-9
  19. "Luca Barbarossa Ti scrivo Eurofestival 1988". YouTube. 16 December 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  20. "Comentadores Do ESC - escportugalforum.pt.vu | o forum eurovisivo português". 21595.activeboard.com. Archived from the original on 21 April 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  21. "Selostajat ja taustalaulajat läpi vuosien? • Viisukuppila". Viisukuppila.fi. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  22. "פורום אירוויזיון". Sf.tapuz.co.il. 13 September 1999. Archived from the original on 8 October 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  23. Baumann, Peter Ramón (OGAE Switzerland)
  24. "Εκφωνητές της ΕΡΤ για τις ψήφους της Ελλάδας στην EUROVISION - Page 3". Retromaniax.gr. Archived from the original on 11 September 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  25. Dyrseth, Seppo (OGAE Norway)
  26. "Sumnja od Jugolasvenskog glasanja". Evropesma.org. Archived from the original on 8 April 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2012.
  27. http://www.viisukuppila.fi/phpBB3/viisula/topic7042.html#p871555
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.