International song competition
The Eurovision Song Contest 1983 was the 28th edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It was held in Munich, West Germany, following the country's victory at the 1982 contest with the song " by Nicole. Although this was Germany's first victory, 1983 was the second time Germany had hosted the contest, having previously done so in 1957. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster (BR) on behalf of the ARD, the contest was held at the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle on 23 April 1983 and was hosted by German dancer Marlene Charell.
Twenty countries took part this year, with France, Greece and Italy all returning this year, while Ireland decided not to participate.
The winner was Luxembourg with the song " by Corinne Hermes, which equalled the record of 5 victories set by France in 1977. This record would in turn be beaten by Ireland in 1994. It was also the second year in a row where the winning entry was performed last on the night and the second year in a row in which Israel won 2nd place. For the third year in a row, at least one country ended up with nul points, and in this case, it happened to be two countries, Spain and Turkey, neither of whom were able to get off the mark.
The 1983 contest was the first to be televised in Australia, via Channel 0/28 (now the Special Broadcasting Service) in Sydney and Melbourne. The contest went on to become popular in Australia, leading to the country's eventual debut at the 60th anniversary contest in 2015.
Location.
Munich is a German city and capital of the Bavarian state. Due to this, Munich houses the parliament and state government. was chosen to host the contest. It was initially named after the president of the Bavarian State Sport Association. The hall opened in 1972 to host basketball events for the 1972 Summer Olympics. Due to staging and production necessities, the 5500 seats of the arena had to be reduced to 3,200 for the night of the final and until the 1985 contest, this was the largest arena to host the event. From this number, 2000 seats were reserved for the delegations and journalists, 1200 tickets were on sale for the general public. The ticket prices ranged from 20 to 50 DM.
Participating countries.
Twenty countries took part in the contest, with France, Greece, and Italy returning to the competition. On the other hand, Ireland was absent this year for the first time because RTÉ workers were in strike action at the time.
Production.
Preparations for the production of the contest started in June 1982. The final was produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk, with production costs of 1.2 million DM, further 1.5 million DM for the organisation and transmission, making a total of 2.7 million DM. With the help of donations and other contributions, Bayerischer Rundfunk was able to reduce the costs at its own expense to about 1 million DM. The city of Munich had to contribute 60 000 DM to a reception for the participating delegations.
The contest was directed by Rainer Bertram. Dieter Reith served as the general musical director of the 60-piece orchestra. Christian Hayer and Günther Lebram served as the executive producers. Other leading figures in the production included Wolf Mittler, Sylvia de Bruycker, Christof Schmid and Joachim Krausz. Rehearsals started on 18 April 1983.
Stage design.
The stage was designed by Hans Gailling. The set was an arc-shaped stage surrounding the orchestra section and had a size of 4 × 34 metres. A 26 metres large and seven metres high steel construction with frames resembling giant electric heaters was used as the background. The 33 frames were equipped with three light panels each, at which hundreds of light bulbs were suspended. In total, 63 000 light bulbs, which could be controlled manually or by sound frequency, lit up and flashed in different sequences and combinations depending on the nature and rhythm of the songs.
Format.
Various receptions and events were organised in the week leading up to the final. On 19 April 1983, a cruise on Lake Starnberg with several participants was held by the German National Tourist Board as a press event for 250 journalists. The Tourist Board also organised a bus tour for several participants to Linderhof Palace and Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 20 April 1983. On 19 April 1983, a reception for the participants was held at the Antiquarium in the Munich Residenz, on behalf of Franz Josef Strauss, minister-president of the state of Bavaria. Parties and receptions for the artists were also organised by the record labels Ariola, Polydor and Deutsche Grammophon. Ralph Siegel, composer of the winning entry of 1982, and his own record label Jupiter Records, held a party for 1000 guests, including many artists, on 21 April 1983.
A press centre with television monitors, typewriters, telephones and paper notebooks was installed for the 600 journalists covering the event.
German Bundespost installed a post office from 18 to 23 April at the Rudi-Sedlmayr-Halle and stamped letters from there with a special Eurovision Song Contest postmark.
Presentation format.
Instead of pre-filmed "postcards", the production team for this edition chose not to produce the postcards for technical reasons. During the change of the stage elements, the name of the next country was shown on screen accompanied by music from the orchestra, followed by a presentation of the upcoming entry by Marlene Charell.
After the first rehearsals, the Austrian and British commentators complained that, since there were no postcards, they felt that there was not enough time to introduce the upcoming entry to their viewers, and subsequently threatened to withdrawn from the contest. As a reaction, for the live show and latter rehearsals, the name of the upcoming country was shown on screen for a certain time so that commentators had enough time.
For the introduction of each entry, Charell stood in front of individual flower arrangements with flowers in the colours of the corresponding entry’s national flag. The floral arrangements were provided by the International Garden Expo 83 organization, as the event was also scheduled to be held on city weeks after the contest. Hostess Marlene Charell made all of her announcements in German before translating a repetition in both French and English. In all three languages, Charell named the country, song title, performing artist, author, composer and conductor. The decision not to use postcards apparently left Marlene lost during the event, as she would have to use three languages to introduce each of the participants.
Due to host Charell's use of three, the voting went on for nearly an hour, stretching the Eurovision contest past three hours for the second time ever, the first after 1979. In addition, Charell made 13 language mistakes throughout the night, some as innocuous as mixing up the words for "points" between the three languages, some as major as nearly awarding points to "Schweden" (Sweden) that were meant for "Schweiz" (Switzerland).
The language problems also occurred during the contest introductions, as Charell mispronounced the Finnish singer Ami Aspelund's surname as "Aspesund" and Spanish singer Remedios Amaya's name as "Ramedios", furthermore she introduced the Norwegian conductor Sigurd Jansen as "...Johannes...Skorgan...", having been forced to make up a name on the spot after forgetting the conductor's name.
Contest overview.
The contest took place on 23 April 1983, beginning at 21:00 CEST (19:00 UTC). At the start of the broadcast, a 7-minutes-film with views of various sights of Germany and of the host city Munich was shown. As part of introduction,a parade of nations was called by the presenter Marlene Charell. The interval act was a dance number set to a medley of German songs which had become internationally famous, including "Strangers in the Night". The host, Marlene Charell was the lead dancer accompanied by her ballet with 20 dancers from her company.
Director of the show Rainer Bertram and Roger Kreischer, the them program director at the Luxembourgish broadcaster RTL, openly criticized the mocking tone of the local media and the public present at the venue towards the luxembourgish entry. It was famously seen during the broadcast that a good part of the public present at the contest site voluntarily left during the performance of Corine Hèrmes, which according to the draw was the last of the 20 participating songs. Other embarrassing reactions towards the Luxembourgish participant were recorded during the voting. Each time the name Luxembourg was announced by the jury spokespeople from each country, laughters and some joking words were heard and when high scores appeared, boos and another low slangs were ensued. When Corinne Hermès performed her reprise, a great part of the audience was already leaving.
After the show, a reception for 1600 guests on behalf of the city of Munich took place in a tent of the International Garden Expo 83.
Spokespersons.
Each country nominated a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1983 contest are listed below.
Detailed voting results.
Each country had a jury consisting of 11 non-professional jurors who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) to their top ten songs.
12 points.
Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:
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. Host broadcaster BR provided 30 commentator boxes for this purpose.
The contest was reportedly broadcast in 30 countries; no official accounts of the global viewing figures are known to exist, with estimates given in the press at the time ranging from 300 to 600 million viewers. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.
References.
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