Eurovision Song Contest 1997 Totally Explained

Everything about Eurovision Song Contest 1997 totally explained

The Eurovision Song Contest 1997, the 42nd in the series, was held in Dublin, Ireland, on 3 May 1997. The presenters were Ronan Keating and Carrie Crowley. Katrina and the Waves, representing the United Kingdom, were the winners of the 1997 contest with the song Love Shine a Light and Marc Roberts from Ireland came second with Mysterious Woman. The winning song scored an unprecedented 227 points; it received points from all participating countries, including five sets of 10 points and a record-breaking ten sets of the maximum 12 points. Love Shine a Light is still regarded as one of the most successful Eurovision winners ever, and was the closing song in the medleys that opened the 50th anniversary show "Congratulations" in Copenhagen 2005, and ESC 2006 Semi-final in Athens.
   After the controversy over the pre-selection in 1996, the European Broadcasting Union introduced a new system for 1997: the countries with the lowest average scores over the previous four years would be excluded from the 1997 contest, and those with the lowest averages over the previous five years would be excluded from future contests (save that every country so excluded for one year would automatically be allowed to participate the following year), with so many countries being omitted as would reduce the number of participants each year to 25.
   The Italian national broadcaster RAI declared that this year was their last year of participating at the Eurovision Song Contest. Israel declined to participate as the Contest was held on its Holocaust Remembrance Day, granting a reprieve to Bosnia-Herzegovina which would otherwise have been excluded due to its low point average over the last four years. RTÉ almost ended up bankrupt due to the high costs of staging its fourth contest in five years. Yet, despite crippling costs for staging the event, RTÉ once again produced a highly spectacular show which included a giant modern stage. This was the third Eurovision set to be designed by Paula Farrell, who had previously been involved with the 1988 and 1994 contests.
   There was a wide array of different styles this year. Denmark brought a rap song, Croatia came with their version of the Spice Girls and Sweden brought a mid '1980s style boy band. The music was in general more modern than before, and for the first time in six years, an up-tempo song won.
   This year, televoting was tested in five countries: Austria, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The results of the televoting countries were in some cases pretty different from those which used a jury. Iceland received 16 of its 18 points from these five countries.
   Long-time Irish conductor Noel Kelehan wasn't the host conductor this year, that duty was fulfilled by Frank McNamara. However, from this year it was allowed to use playback, and in 1999, the orchestra was completely abolished.

Results

Draw	Language	Artist	Song	English Translation	Place	Points
1	Greek	Hara & Andreas Konstantinou	Mana mu (Μάνα μου)	Motherland	5	98
2	Turkish	Şebnem Paker & Grup Etnic	Dinle	Listen	3	121
3	Norwegian	Tor Endresen	San Francisco	-	24	0
4	German	Bettina Soriat	One Step	-	21	12
5	English	Marc Roberts	Mysterious Woman	-	2	157
6	Slovene	Tanja Ribič	Zbudi se	Wake Up	10	60
7	Italian	Barbara Berta	Dentro di me	Inside of Me	22	5
8	Dutch	Mrs. Einstein	Niemand heeft nog tijd	No One Has Time Anymore	22	5
9	Italian	Jalisse	Fiumi di parole	Rivers of Words	4	114
10	Spanish	Marcos Llunas	Sin rencor	Without Grudge	6	96
11	German	Bianca Shomburg	Zeit	Time	18	22
12	Polish	Anna Maria Jopek	Ale jestem	But I Am	11	54
13	Estonian	Maarja-Liis Ilus	Keelatud maa	Forbidden Land	8	82
14	Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian	Alma Čardžić	Goodbye	-	18	22
15	Portuguese	Célia Lawson	Antes do adeus	Before Goodbye	24	0
16	Swedish	Blond	Bara hon älskar mig	If Only She Loves Me	14	36
17	Greek	Marianna Zorba	Horepse (Χόρεψε)	Dance	12	39
18	English	Debbie Scerri	Let Me Fly	-	9	66
19	Hungarian	V.I.P.	Miért kell, hogy elmenj?	Why Do You Have To Go?	12	39
20	Russian	Alla Pugacheva	Primadonna (Примадонна)	Prima Donna	15	33
21	Danish	Kølig Kaj	Stemmen i mit liv	The Voice In My Life	16	25
22	French	Fanny	Sentiments songes	Dream Feelings	7	95
23	Croatian	E.N.I.	Probudi me	Awaken Me	17	24
24	English	Katrina & The Waves	Love Shine a Light	-	1	227
25	Icelandic	Paul Oscar	Minn hinsti dans	My Final Dance	20	18

Voting structure

Each country had a jury that awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points for their top ten songs, or a televote, where the top ten most voted for songs were awarded the 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 points.

12 points

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

N.	To	From
10	United Kingdom	Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary, Russia, Denmark, France, Croatia
3	France	Norway, Poland, Estonia
3	Turkey	Spain, Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina
2	Cyprus	Greece, Iceland
1	Ireland	United Kingdom
1	Italy	Portugal
1	Spain	Malta
1	Estonia	Italy
1	Greece	Cyprus
1	Malta	Turkey
1	Russia	Slovenia

It was interesting to see that Iceland got most of its 18 points from the 5 countries that used televoting. Ireland was ostensibly the best scoring country across the televoting countries, except they were able to score points from all 5 televoting countries. The United Kingdom was only eligible to receive points from 4 of them, since they couldn't vote for themselves. In fact, the UK received 12 points from all the other televoting countries except Germany, from whom they received 10 points: in other words, the UK earned 46 of 48 possible televote points that year; Ireland earned 47 of 60 possible televote points—including 12 from the UK.

Score sheet

Voting procedure used:Red: Televote. Blue: Jury.		Voters
Voting procedure used:Red: Televote. Blue: Jury.
	Cyprus		0	2	0	3	4	4	10	4	10	5	0	1	0	3	0	12	7	0	1	7	4	4	5	12
	Turkey	0		0	7	2	0	6	2	7	12	12	0	6	12	5	6	7	10	6	4	0	6	0	4	7
	Norway	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Austria	0	0	0		0	0	0	3	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	3	0	0	0	0	0
	Ireland	8	6	3	10		1	7	4	10	6	8	7	8	8	10	10	0	0	8	5	10	10	6	12	0
	Slovenia	2	10	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	2	4	7	4	0	3	5	0	10	0	7	3	0	3
	Switzerland	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	2	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Netherlands	0	1	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Italy	6	5	0	1	1	10	10	7		8	4	8	0	6	12	3	5	0	1	7	4	0	10	3	1
	Spain	10	4	0	0	6	5	8	6	3		2	4	0	0	8	0	6	12	10	8	2	2	0	0	0
	Germany	0	0	0	3	0	0	5	0	5	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	1	3	0	0	0	5	0	0
	Poland	0	0	4	8	0	7	0	1	1	2	6		3	4	2	0	1	0	7	0	5	3	0	0	0
	Estonia	1	0	0	6	8	3	0	0	12	4	7	6		1	1	1	0	0	4	0	8	8	0	10	2
	Bosnia-Herz	0	8	0	4	0	0	2	0	0	0	3	0	0		0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
	Portugal	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Sweden	0	0	8	0	5	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	6	0	0	7	4
	Greece	12	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	7	0	0	0	0	0	0		6	0	2	0	0	7	0	0
	Malta	5	12	10	0	7	0	0	0	6	1	0	0	0	5	0	0	8		0	0	3	1	8	0	0
	Hungary	0	3	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	5	0	0	0	0	2		0	0	5	2	8	5
	Russia	0	0	1	5	0	12	0	8	0	0	0	0	7	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0
	Denmark	0	0	7	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	7	2	0	0	0		0	0	2	6
	France	3	2	12	0	10	2	3	5	0	0	0	12	12	3	6	2	4	0	2	6	1		0	0	10
	Croatia	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	3	0	2	0	5	0	8	0	0	0	0		1	0
	United Kingdom	7	5	6	12	12	8	12	12	8	5	10	10	10	10	7	12	10	3	12	12	12	12	12		8
	Iceland	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6
The table is ordered by appearance.

Spokespersons

Cyprus - Marios Skordis
Turkey - Ömer Önder
Norway - Ragnhild Sælthun Fjørtoft
Austria - Adriana Zartl
Ireland - Eileen Dunne
Slovenia - Mojca Mavec
Switzerland - Sandy Altermatt
Netherlands - Corry Brokken
Italy - Peppi Franzelin
Spain - Belén Fernández de Henestrosa
Germany - Christina
Poland - Jan Chojnacki
Estonia - Helene Tedre
Bosnia-Herzegovina - Segmedina Srna
Portugal - Cristina Esteves
Sweden - Gösta Hanson
Greece - Niki Karra
Malta - Anna Bonanno
Hungary - Györgyi Albert
Russia - Arina Sharapova
Denmark - Bent
France - Frédéric Lopez & Marie Myriam
Croatia - Davor Mestrovic
United Kingdom - Colin Berry
Iceland - Svanhildur Jakobsdóttir

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