Eurovision 1976: Britain’s Waterloo | Song super cut and animated scoreboard

UK VERSION - Check below
An edited down version of the Eurovision Song Contest 1976 from The Hague, with a scoreboard using today’s technology. This all started as a lockdown project!

This edit will give a flavour of the evening (Sat 3 April, 9pm) with a rare copy of Michael Aspel’s BBC commentary, courtesy of Joris Peters, and another wonderful treatment done by @SvenskTV.

The Hague sits about 2-and-a-half hours drive north of Waterloo, the site of Napoleon’s defeat at the hands of the Seventh Coalition, led by Britain in 1815. Britain’s victory there led to an unparalleled 99-year dominance around the world and relative peace on the continent of Europe. Of the battle, the Duke of Wellington said it was “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”.

Of course, I’m not really talking about that Waterloo but ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’ instead, but Eurovision did witness a British victory over the French, which was a ‘near-run thing’ for the first half of the voting at least, even though any statistical analysis confirms a ‘damn good thrashing’!

Although ABBA had greater cultural impact and commercial success, ‘Save Your Kisses For Me’ seem to have soundly beaten them in terms of Eurovision winning single sales. Some 6 million were shifted making the song the biggest selling of 1976 in the UK, and it led to it being on the top of many European charts for a number of weeks, including a 5 week run in France. No winner has come close to this, before or since. The song, and the slick performance by a band who’d had a successful career prior to the Contest still remains one of the key constituent parts of any re-telling of Eurovision history - the dance routine as significant to Eurovision fans as Wellington’s victory is to European history fans.

The setting for Brotherhood of Man’s victory was the Congresgebouw in The Hague. NOS provided a spectacular show in which Roland de Groot’s second set design (1970) shape-shifted so remarkably, I had to recreate. There was lots of ‘modern’ twists include the improved camera work - for the first time we see camera shots that react more to the music. The use of shaped wipes can often date a production of course, and it does so too in this instance but the employment of the multi-lingual Hans van Willigenburg in the green room catapults the show into the 21st Century, complete with lack of insightful answers. A former champion hosting was safe and modern choice in this instance.

In 1975 I noticed a number of problems facing Eurovision, one being the blinking light on the dashboard of Teach-In’s lack of chart success. This light was firmly extinguished, although I think 1976 is the year that ‘novelty’ really becomes noticeable (Switzerland’s ‘Djambo’ and Finland’s Pump Pump). Overall the board lacked some quality, which was reflected by the juries who had opened up a massive 54 point difference between France and Monaco. This was a two horse race, but with only 3 juries not giving the UK the top three marks of 8, 10 or 12, it wasn’t a photo finish.

The other problems were solved in two different ways. There was general upset in the UK about how the BBC were selecting acts, and this was immediately rectified by the so called ‘all comers’ format - last seen in 1963 - returning with numerous acts with their songs competing. A tinker that had immediate results. In Sweden, the political disgruntlement of the 1975 hosting, along with the financial burden meant they became a high profile absentee.

Eurovision left The Hague much richer, not only because of NOS’s fabulous production, but also the high profile winners (who even kept Elton John off the #1 spot in the summer). As Aspel comments, the UK were no longer the bridesmaids, but the bride once again…and they were awaiting a safe honeymoon with the BBC in 1977.

DESIGN AND THE BOARD
For the first time we have an animating logo! Although we saw the first use of this one in 1970, it’s great to see it come to life. The other main modernisation is the animating postcards which reveal a flag heavy design. It looks to me the use of magnets made this happen. The board in the hall remains very separate in terms of design (see comments below) but I borrowed the very safe ‘Univers’ (Adrian Frutiger, 1957) for the bulk, with Book Antiqua/Palatino (Hermann Zapf, 1949) doing the rest, although it’s not entirely accurate - I couldn’t match the font used by NOS exactly. The bulk of my design is the background of course, animating to the various states and the main challenge was making the board readable, and also configuring the new ‘song bar’, which I hope helps navigating the performance order period a little easier.

TRANSFER NEWS
OUT: MLT, SWE, TUR
BACK: AUT, GRE
(19-3) + 2 = 18

INTERVAL ACT
The DSCB.

CREDITS
@SvenskTV for the footage
Joris Peters for BBC commentary
Flags: countryflags.com

00:00 Intro
06:00 Song super-cut
39:35 Interval
44:46 Voting intro
45:45 The reorder board 76
1:13:28 Recap, data & reprise