Eurovision Song Contest 1996

The 1996 contest took place in Oslo, Norway, following the country's victory at the with the song "", 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 , an indoor arena opened in 1990 and located in the 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. ==Production==

, location of the welcome reception (pictured in 2013) also performed as the show's opening act. The Eurovision Song Contest 1996 was produced by the Norwegian public broadcaster (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. 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. 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. 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. • Süleyman Demirel, President of Turkey (Turkish) • Virginia Bottomley, Secretary of State for National Heritage (English) • Alberto Escudero Claramunt, Spanish Ambassador to Norway (Spanish) • António Guterres, Prime Minister of Portugal (Portuguese) • Glafcos Clerides, President of Cyprus (Greek) • Edoardo Fenech Adami, Prime Minister of Malta (Maltese) • Zlatko Mateša, Prime Minister of Croatia (Croatian) • Elisabeth Gehrer, Federal Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs (German) • Michel Coquoz, Swiss ''chargé d'affaires'' in Norway (French) • Caterína Dimaki, Greek ''chargé d'affaires'' in Norway (Greek) • Tiit Vähi, Prime Minister of Estonia (Estonian) • Gro Harlem Brundtland, Prime Minister of Norway (Norwegian) • Philippe Douste-Blazy, Minister of Culture (French) • Milan Kučan, President of Slovenia (Slovene) • Aad Nuis, State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science (Dutch) • Luc Van den Brande, Minister-President of Flanders (Dutch) • John Bruton, Taoiseach (English) • Riitta Uosukainen, Speaker of the Parliament of Finland (Finnish) • Davíð Oddsson, Prime Minister of Iceland (Icelandic) • Aleksander Kwaśniewski, President of Poland (Polish) • Alija Izetbegović, President of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnian) • Vladimír Mečiar, Prime Minister of Slovakia (Slovak) • Göran 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. 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 winning artist of the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest The contest took place on 18 May 1996 at 21:00 (CEST) and lasted 3 hours and 7 minutes. 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. Spokespersons at the 1996 contest are listed below. • Ragnhild Sælthun Fjørtoft • Solveig Herlin • Svanhildur Konráðsdóttir • • Segmedina Srna • • Ulla 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". Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. } } ==Notes and references==

Notes References Bibliography • • • • • • ==External links==