Eurovision Song Contest 1980

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Eurovision Song Contest 1980
Dates
Final	19 April 1980
Host
Venue	Nederlands Congresgebouw The Hague, Netherlands
Presenter(s)	Marlous Fluitsma Hans van Willigenburg (green room)
Musical director	Rogier van Otterloo
Directed by	Theo Ordeman
Executive supervisor	Frank Naef
Executive producer	Fred Oster
Host broadcaster	Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS)
Interval act	The Dutch Rhythm Steel and Show Band with The Lee Jackson Dancers
Website	eurovision.tv/event/the-hague-1980
Participants
Number of entries	19
Debuting countries	Morocco
Returning countries	Turkey
Non-returning countries	Israel  Monaco
hide Participation map      Participating countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1980
Vote
Voting system	Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Nul points	None
Winning song	Ireland "What's Another Year"
1979 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1981

The Eurovision Song Contest 1980 was the 25th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 19 April 1980 in The Hague. The presenter was Marlous Fluitsma, although each song was introduced by a presenter from the participating nation. In some cases, this was the same person providing the commentary. The contest was won by Johnny Logan, representing Ireland with a song called "What's Another Year".^[1][2]

Location[]

Nederlands Congresgebouw - host venue of the 1980 contest.

Israel, winners in 1979, declined to host the 1980 show for the second time in a row, as the IBA could not fund another international production, and the Israeli government turned down a request to extend the IBA budget. The European Broadcasting Union also set the broadcast on the same day as the Yom HaZikaron holiday, wherefore Israel decided not to participate. After Spain, the 2nd-place winner of 1979, and reportedly the UK, refused to host, the Netherlands finally agreed to host the show in a small-scale production. According to Yair Lapid, son of Tommy Lapid who was then the IBA director general, Lapid called his counterpart at NOS and convinced him to take the "undesired honour", when he realised that the extra cost could paralyse the regular work of the IBA.^[3] As of 2021, this is the last contest that was not hosted by the previous year's winning country. The Hague is the seat of government of the Netherlands and the capital of South Holland. It is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Located in the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is in the centre of the Haaglanden conurbation at the southwest corner of the larger Randstad conurbation. The contest took place at the Congresgebouw (presently known as the World Forum). The venue was constructed in 1969 and previously hosted the contest in 1976.

Contest overview[]

The venue that had hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 1976, Congresgebouw, was chosen. Various parts of the opening sequence and stage of the 1976 festival were reused. Again, Roland de Groot took charge of the design. As with the 1977 and 1978 contests, there were no pre-filmed postcards between the songs, with a guest presenter from each nation introducing the entries. Apart from this, the presenter, Marlous Fluitsma, except for the voting, did not make the presentation in English or French, which means that the presentation was made almost entirely in Dutch. NOS spent just US$725,000 on the project.

During the live interval act performance of San Fernando by The Dutch Rhythm Steel and Show Band with The Lee Jackson Dancers, Hans van Willigenburg intercut brief interviews with some of the participants backstage in the green room, speaking to the singers from Germany, Luxembourg, the UK, Ireland, Norway and the Netherlands, each in their own language.

After Israel announced its non-participation, Morocco entered into the contest instead. Monaco also withdrew from the contest, and will not return until 2004.

Australian-born Johnny Logan representing Ireland was the winner of this Eurovision with the song "What's Another Year". This was Ireland's second time winning the competition, having won in 1970 with "All Kinds of Everything", which was also held on Dutch soil.

Germany were runners-up this year. They would finish in second place again the following year, finally winning in 1982. Germany would go on to finish second again in 1985 and 1987, making the 1980s their most successful Eurovision Song Contest decade. After two relatively poor placings, United Kingdom returned to form by coming third.

Format[]

The scoring system implemented in 1975 remained the same; each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs. However this year for the first time, countries were required to cast their votes in ascending order, 1,2,3 etc. This change made for the added excitement of waiting for each country to award their highest 12 points at the end of each voting round.

For the voting sequence, Marlous Fluitsma used a unique telephone to speak to the nineteen jury spokespersons, although the phones were simply props and were not connected.

Conductors[]

Each performance had a conductor who conducted the orchestra.^[4][5] It marked the only contest to feature a Black conductor conducting an entry, that being Italy's conductor Del Newman.^{[citation needed]}

Results[]

Draw	Country	Artist	Song	Language[6][7]	Place[8]	Points
01	Austria	Blue Danube	"Du bist Musik"	German	8	64
02	Turkey	Ajda Pekkan	"Pet'r Oil"	Turkish	15	23
03	Greece	Anna Vissi and the Epikouri	"Autostop" (Ωτοστόπ)	Greek	13	30
04	Luxembourg	Sophie & Magaly	"Papa pingouin"	French	9	56
05	Morocco	Samira Bensaïd	"Bitaqat Hub" (بطاقة حب)	Arabic	18	7
06	Italy	Alan Sorrenti	"Non so che darei"	Italian	6	87
07	Denmark	Bamses Venner	"Tænker altid på dig"	Danish	14	25
08	Sweden	Tomas Ledin	"Just nu!"	Swedish	10	47
09	Switzerland	Paola	"Cinéma"	French	4	104
10	Finland	Vesa-Matti Loiri	"Huilumies"	Finnish	19	6
11	Norway	Sverre Kjelsberg & Mattis Hætta	"Sámiid ædnan"	Norwegian[a]	16	15
12	Germany	Katja Ebstein	"Theater"	German	2	128
13	United Kingdom	Prima Donna	"Love Enough for Two"	English	3	106
14	Portugal	José Cid	"Um grande, grande amor"	Portuguese[b]	7	71
15	Netherlands	Maggie MacNeal	"Amsterdam"	Dutch	5	93
16	France	Profil	"Hé, hé, m'sieurs dames"	French	11	45
17	Ireland	Johnny Logan	"What's Another Year"	English	1	143
18	Spain	Trigo Limpio	"Quédate esta noche"	Spanish	12	38
19	Belgium	Telex	"Euro-Vision"	French	17	14

Scoreboard[]

Johnny Logan performing his winning song "What's Another Year"

12 points[]

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

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

Returning artists[]

Katja Ebstein during rehearsals

Maggie MacNeal during rehearsals

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Paola del Medico	Switzerland	1969
Katja Ebstein	Germany	1970, 1971
Maggie MacNeal	Netherlands	1974 (part of Mouth & MacNeal)

Song presenters[]

Each song was introduced by a presenter from the national country.^[5] A few countries used their commentators as presenters, with Turkey's radio commentator and the TV commentators of Denmark, Sweden and Finland being utilised for this role. All the introductions were made in the language in which the song was performed, with the exception of Ireland which was introduced in Irish.

•  Austria –  [de]
•  Turkey – Şebnem Savaşçı
•  Greece – Kelly Sakakou
•  Luxembourg –  [fr]
•  Morocco – Mohammed Bouzidi
•  Italy – Beatrice Cori
•  Denmark – Jørgen de Mylius
•  Sweden – Ulf Elfving
•   Switzerland – Lyliam Stambac
•  Finland – Heikki Harma
•  Norway – Åse Kleveland (Norwegian representative in the 1966 Contest and host of the 1986 Contest)
•  Germany – Carolin Reiber
•  United Kingdom – Noel Edmonds
•  Portugal – Eládio Clímaco
•  Netherlands – Marlous Fluitsma
•  France – Évelyne Dhéliat
•  Ireland – Thelma Mansfield
•  Spain – Mari Cruz Soriano
•  Belgium –  [fr]

Broadcasters, commentators and spokespersons[]

Spokespersons[]

Listed below is the order in which votes were cast during the 1980 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country.^[10]

Broadcasters and commentators[]

Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Austria	FS2	[de]	[14]
	Hitradio Ö3	[de]
Belgium	RTBF1	French: Jacques Mercier	[10]
	BRT TV1	Dutch: Luc Appermont	[10]
	RTBF La Première	French: Marc Danval
	BRT Radio 1	Dutch: Herwig Haes
Denmark	DR TV	Jørgen de Mylius	[10]
	DR P3	[dk]
Finland	YLE TV1	Heikki Harma and  [fi]	[10]
France	TF1	Patrick Sabatier	[10]
	France Inter	Julien Lepers
Germany	Deutsches Fernsehen	[de]
	Deutschlandfunk/hr3	[de]
Greece	ERT	[el]
	Proto Programma	[el]
Ireland	RTÉ 1	Larry Gogan	[10]
	RTÉ Radio 1	Pat Kenny
Italy	Rete 2	Michele Gammino	[10]
Luxembourg	RTL Télé Luxembourg	Jacques Navadic	[10]
	RTL	[fr]
Morocco	TVM	TBC
Netherlands	Nederland 2	Pim Jacobs	[10]
	Hilversum 1	Willem van Beusekom
Norway	NRK	Knut Aunbu	[10]
	NRK P1	[no]
Portugal	RTP1	[pt]
Spain	TVE1	[es]	[10]
Sweden	SVT TV1	Ulf Elfving	[10]
	SR P3	Kent Finell
Switzerland	TV DRS	German:  [de]	[15]
	TSR	French:  [fr]	[10][16]
	TSI	Italian: Giovanni Bertini
Turkey	Ankara Television	Bülend Özveren	[10]
	Radyo 3	Şebnem Savaşçı
United Kingdom	BBC1	Terry Wogan	[5][10][17]
	BBC Radio 2	Steve Jones	[5]
	BFBS Radio	Andrew Pastouna	[5]

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref(s)
Yugoslavia	TVB 2	Serbo-Croatian: Milovan Ilić
	TVZ 1	Serbo-Croatian: Oliver Mlakar
	TVL 1	Slovene:  [sl]

National jury members[]

•  Finland – Toivo Kärki^[18]
•  Ireland – Mary Hannon^{[citation needed]}
•  Spain – José María Reíllo, Carmen Miranda, Emilio Machado,  [es], Rafael Lozano, Nieves Aguado, Ana Menéndez, Rafael Gómez, Isabel Ortiz, Pedro Olivares, Mari Luz Blanco

Notes[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eurovision Song Contest 1980.

• Official website