Eurovision Song Contest 1996

Location

The 1996 contest took place in Oslo, Norway, following the country's victory at the with the song "Nocturne", performed by Secret Garden. It was the second time that Norway had hosted the contest, following the staged in Bergen. The chosen venue was the Oslo Spektrum, an indoor arena opened in 1990 and located in the Sentrum district of the city, which has hosted music concerts, ice hockey matches, and the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert. Around 6,000 spectators were present in the venue during the contest.

Participants

A total of thirty countries submitted entries for the 1996 contest, however per the rules of the event only twenty-three countries would be allowed to participate. Norway, by virtue of being the host country, was guaranteed a place, with all remaining countries competing in the qualifying round in order to gain a spot in the event. Initially broadcasters from thirty-three countries expressed an interest in participating, however planned entries from , , and failed to materialise; these nations would eventually make their contest debuts in the 2000s.

Three representatives who had performed as lead artists in previous contests featured among the performers at this event. Marianna Efstratiou had represented , while Elisabeth Andreassen made her fourth appearance, having competed for as a member of the band Chips, as well as representing Norway twice, winning the contest in as a member of Bobbysocks! and performing with Jan Werner Danielsen in . Additionally, Georgina Abela, who had represented with Paul Giordimaina, returned as a backing singer for the Maltese entrant Miriam Christine.

Production

The Eurovision Song Contest 1996 was produced by the Norwegian public broadcaster Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK). Odd Arvid Strømstad served as executive producer, Pål Veiglum served as director, Bjarte Ulfstein served as designer, and Frode Thingnæs served as musical director, leading the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. A separate musical director could be nominated by each participating delegation to lead the orchestra during its country's performance, with the host musical director also available to conduct for those countries which did not nominate their own conductor. On behalf of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the event was overseen by Christine Marchal-Ortiz as scrutineer.

The show was presented by the Norwegian journalist and television presenter Ingvild Bryn and the Norwegian singer Morten Harket, lead vocalist of the Norwegian band a-ha. The contest underwent a re-brand for this edition, as NRK set out to improve the image of the competition and broaden its audience appeal. The event was referred to by the hosts and through on-screen captions as Eurosong '96, the only occasion in which this contraction was officially used to refer to the event.

Rehearsals in the contest venue for the competing acts began on 13 May 1996. Each country had two technical rehearsals in the week approaching the contest, with countries rehearsing in the order in which they would perform. The first rehearsals took place on 13 and 14 May, with each country allowed 40 minutes total on stage, followed by 20 minutes to review recordings with producers and to consult on suggested changes, and then a 20-minute press conference. Each country's second rehearsals took place on 15 and 16 May, with 30 minutes total on stage followed by another 20 minute press conference. A full technical rehearsal with all artists took place on the afternoon of 17 May, followed by two dress rehearsals with an audience on the evening of 17 May and the following afternoon. The competing delegations were invited to a welcome reception during the week in the build-up to the event, hosted by the Mayor of Oslo at Oslo City Hall on the evening of 13 May, as well as to events during the rehearsal week including a sailing trip on the Oslofjord and a trip to the Norsk Folkemuseum in Bygdøy where a special Eurovision-themed exhibition had been installed.

NRK introduced visual effects to the contest for the first time. Computer-generated imagery (CGI) was featured as overlays during the broadcast of the competing entries, and the voting segment was conducted via chroma key technology built by Silicon Graphics; during this segment host Ingvild Bryn was situated in the "blue room", a special area to the side of the stage with a blue-coloured background, which allowed the contest scoreboard to be rendered virtually using CGI. The chroma key virtual display also included live footage of the artists in the green room backstage, as well as the video feeds of each country's spokespersons as they delivered their country's points.

Format

Each participating broadcaster submitted one song, which was required to be no longer than three minutes in duration and performed in the language, or one of the languages, of the country which it represented. A maximum of six performers were allowed on stage during each country's performance, and all participants were required to have reached the age of 16 in the year of the contest. Each entry could utilise all or part of the live orchestra and could use instrumental-only backing tracks, however any backing tracks used could only include the sound of instruments featured on stage being mimed by the performers.

For the 1996 contest a trial qualification process replaced the relegation system used from 1993 to 1995, whereby the lowest-ranked countries in each final were eliminated from the following year's contest. Under the new procedure, an audio preselection was organised for all participating countries, apart from the host country Norway, which received an automatic right to compete in the final, to be joined by an additional 22 countries. National juries in all competing countries, including Norway, listened to the submitted entries on audio tape, with juries required to listen to all songs three times before voting. Each of the eight members on each country's jury awarded their favourite song twelve points, their second-favourite ten points, their third-favourite eight points, with subsequent points being awarded consecutively down to each juror's tenth-favourite song being awarded one point, with the points awarded by all jurors being totalled to determine each country's top ten songs which were awarded points in the same manner. Although never officially confirmed, it has been rumoured that this system was introduced in an attempt to appease Germany, one of Eurovision's biggest markets and financial contributors, which would have otherwise been relegated under the previous system.

The EBU required all entries to be submitted by 20March 1996. Jury voting was held on 20 and 21 March, with the qualifying countries publicly revealed on 22 March as part of the running order draw for the final conducted by Christian Borch. The full results of how individual juries had voted was not intended to be revealed publicly, but the full breakdown has since become available.

Voting procedure

The results of the 1996 contest were determined using the scoring system introduced in : each country awarded twelve points to its favourite entry, followed by ten points to its second favourite, and then awarded points in decreasing value from eight to one for the remaining songs which featured in the country's top ten, with countries unable to vote for their own entry. The points awarded by each country were determined by an assembled jury of sixteen individuals, which was required to be split evenly between members of the public and music professionals, between men and women, and by age. Each jury member voted in secret and awarded between one and ten votes to each participating song, excluding that from their own country and with no abstentions permitted. The votes of each member were collected following the country's performance and then tallied by the non-voting jury chairperson to determine the points to be awarded. In any cases where two or more songs in the top ten received the same number of votes, a show of hands by all jury members was used to determine the final placing. Individuals who had sat on a jury for the qualifying round were barred from sitting on a jury for the final. This was the last occasion that juries alone decided the result of the contest, as five nations introduced public televoting as a trial in , and almost all other countries followed suit the .

Postcards

The "postcards" were 70-second video introductions shown on television whilst the stage is being prepared for the next contestant to perform their entry; the postcards for each country at the 1996 contest was made up of three segments. In the first segment the participating country was highlighted geographically on a map of Europe, followed by video footage of that country's competing artist or artists in their home country during their day-to-day lives, which also featured each artist packing a branded backpack with important items which they would take with them to Oslo. The second segment featured footage of nature scenes in Norway as well as Norwegian people in everyday life, often accompanied by music from Norwegian electronic group Subgud. The final segment consisted of a pre-recorded good luck message from a governmental representative from each respective country in the language of that country. The seniority of these figures varied between the different countries; among the contributors were then-President of Turkey Süleyman Demirel, who survived an assassination attempt on the day of the contest, and then-Prime Minister of Portugal António Guterres, who would later become the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2017. The individuals who provided messages for each country are shown below, alongside the position which they held at the time of the contest and the language in which they provided their message.

• TurkeySüleyman Demirel, President of Turkey (Turkish)
• United KingdomVirginia Bottomley, Secretary of State for National Heritage (English)
• SpainAlberto Escudero Claramunt, Spanish Ambassador to Norway (Spanish)
• PortugalAntónio Guterres, Prime Minister of Portugal (Portuguese)
• CyprusGlafcos Clerides, President of Cyprus (Greek)
• MaltaEdoardo Fenech Adami, Prime Minister of Malta (Maltese)
• CroatiaZlatko Mateša, Prime Minister of Croatia (Croatian)
• AustriaElisabeth Gehrer, Federal Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs (German)
• SwitzerlandMichel Coquoz, Swiss chargé d'affaires in Norway (French)
• GreeceCaterína Dimaki, Greek chargé d'affaires in Norway (Greek)
• EstoniaTiit Vähi, Prime Minister of Estonia (Estonian)
• NorwayGro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway (Norwegian)
• FrancePhilippe Douste-Blazy, Minister of Culture (French)
• SloveniaMilan Kučan, President of Slovenia (Slovene)
• NetherlandsAad Nuis, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science (Dutch)
• BelgiumLuc Van den Brande, Minister-President of Flanders (Dutch)
• IrelandJohn Bruton, Taoiseach (English)
• FinlandRiitta Uosukainen, Speaker of the Parliament of Finland (Finnish)
• IcelandDavíð Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland (Icelandic)
• PolandAleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland (Polish)
• Bosnia and HerzegovinaAlija Izetbegović, President of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnian)
• SlovakiaVladimír Mečiar, Prime Minister of Slovakia (Slovak)
• SwedenGöran Persson, Prime Minister of Sweden (Swedish)

Contest overview

Qualifying round

The qualifying round took place on 20 and 21 March 1996, and the results were announced on 22 March. The table below outlines the participating countries, the order in which the juries listened to the entries, the competing artists and songs, and the results of the voting. Countries were ordered alphabetically by ISO two-letter country code.

The entries from , , , , , , and were eliminated following the qualifying round. This marked the first time that Germany was absent from the contest and remains the only occasion to date where the nation has not participated in the contest final. Additionally Macedonia's first attempt to compete in the contest is not considered a debut entry by the EBU, with the nation eventually going on to make its official televised debut in .

Hungary and tied on the same score for the final qualification place, however Finland qualified for the contest due to them having received the highest individual score (8 points) compared to Hungary (7 points).

Final

The contest took place on 18 May 1996 at 21:00 (CEST) and lasted 3 hours and 7 minutes. In addition to his role as host, Harket also performed the song "Heaven's Not for Saints" as the show's opening act. The interval act, entitled "Vardebrenning" or "Beacon Burning", was created by Petter Skavlan. The act featured a film montage created by Nils Gaup which combined stev, jazz, and Norwegian folk music as part of a musical tour of Norway, followed by a dance number performed live in the Oslo Spektrum by the Oslo Danse Ensemble, composed by Egil Monn-Iversen and choreographed by Runar Borge. The film section featured performances by Torbjørg Aamlid Paus, Bukkene Bruse, Bendik Hofseth, Håvard Gimse, Helge Kjekshus, the Brazz Brothers, Mari Boine and Terje Rypdal.

The winner was , represented by the song "The Voice", written by Brendan Graham and performed by Eimear Quinn. This was Ireland's seventh contest win, extending its record achieved in 1994, as well as its fourth contest win in five years following victories in the , and 1994 contests. Graham recorded his second contest win in three years as a songwriter, having written the winning song of the 1994 contest "Rock 'n' Roll Kids", and thus became one of five individuals to have won the contest more than once as an artist or songwriter up to that point in time, alongside Willy van Hemert, Yves Dessca, Johnny Logan and Rolf Løvland. , and achieved their highest placings to date by finishing fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, while finished in last place for the eighth time.

During the announcement of the Spanish votes, the Spanish spokesperson Belén Fernández de Henestrosa referred to the Netherlands as "Holland", which was misheard by Ingvild Bryn as "Poland" and which resulted in the Spanish six points being incorrectly attributed to the latter country. The results of the contest were amended after the event to correct this error, and the tables in this article present the corrected results as published by the EBU.

Spokespersons

Each participating broadcaster appointed a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for its respective country. As had been the case since the , the spokespersons were connected via satellite and appeared in vision during the broadcast, with the exception of the Norwegian spokesperson, Ragnhild Sælthun Fjørtoft, who appeared in person in the Oslo Spektrum. Spokespersons at the 1996 contest are listed below.

1. Turkey
2. United KingdomColin Berry
3. SpainBelén Fernández de Henestrosa
4. PortugalCristina Rocha
5. CyprusMarios Skordis
6. MaltaRuth Amaira
7. Croatia
8. Austria
9. SwitzerlandYves Ménestrier
10. GreeceNiki Venega
11. EstoniaAnnika Talvik
12. NorwayRagnhild Sælthun Fjørtoft
13. FranceLaurent Broomhead
14. Slovenia
15. NetherlandsMarcha
16. BelgiumAn Ploegaerts
17. IrelandEileen Dunne
18. FinlandSolveig Herlin
19. IcelandSvanhildur Konráðsdóttir
20. Poland
21. Bosnia and HerzegovinaSegmedina Srna
22. Slovakia
23. SwedenUlla Rundqvist

Detailed voting results

Jury voting was used to determine the points awarded by all countries. The announcement of the results from each country was conducted in the order in which they performed, with the spokespersons announcing their country's points in English or French in ascending order. The detailed breakdown of the points awarded by each country is listed in the tables below.

Qualifying round

12 points

The below table summarises how the maximum 12 points were awarded from one country to another in the qualifying round.

Final

12 points

The below table summarises how the maximum 12 points were awarded from one country to another in the final. The winning country is shown in bold.

Broadcasts

Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating EBU member broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. These commentators were typically sent to the venue to report on the event, and were able to provide commentary from small booths constructed at the back of the venue. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

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