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Eurovision Song Contest 1988

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Eurovision Song Contest 1988
Dates
Final	30 April 1988
Host
Venue	RDS Simmonscourt Pavilion, Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland
Presenter(s)	Pat Kenny Michelle Rocca
Musical director	Noel Kelehan
Directed by	Declan Lowney
Executive supervisor	Frank Naef
Executive producer	Liam Miller
Host broadcaster	Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ)
Website	eurovision.tv/event/dublin-1988
Participants
Number of entries	21
Debuting countries	None
Returning countries	None
Non-returning countries	Cyprus
Participation map      Competing countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1988
Vote
Voting system	Each country awarded 12, 10, 8-1 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Winning song	Switzerland "Ne partez pas sans moi"
1987 ← Eurovision Song Contest → 1989

The Eurovision Song Contest 1988 was the 33rd edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Dublin, Ireland, following Johnny Logan's win at the 1987 contest with the song "Hold Me Now". Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ), the contest was held at the RDS Simmonscourt on 30 April 1988 and was hosted by Irish broadcaster Pat Kenny and the Miss Ireland 1980 Michelle Rocca, marking the first time since the 1979 contest that two presenters had hosted the contest.

Twenty-one countries took part, after an initial plan of twenty-two, as Cyprus' song was disqualified for breaching the contest's rules by being published a few years earlier, in an attempt to represent the country at a prior edition of the contest. The Cypriot song had been drawn to be performed 2nd in the running order.

The winner was Switzerland with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi", performed by Canadian singer Céline Dion and composed by Atilla Şereftuğ with lyrics in FrenchbyNella Martinetti. Switzerland beat the United Kingdom by just one point in the last vote to win the title. The victory helped launch Dion's international career, subsequently leading her to become one of the best-selling artists of all time.

Location[edit]

Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. The contest took place at the Simmonscourt Pavilion of the Royal Dublin Society, which was normally used for agricultural and horse shows. The same venue had hosted the 1981 contest. The staging of the contest in Dublin in 1988 formed part of Dublin's year long celebration of 1000 years since it was established by Scandinavian settlers in 988.

Participating countries[edit]

Twenty-one countries took part, after an initial plan of twenty-two, as Cyprus was disqualified after it had already submitted an entry. Cypriot broadcaster CyBC had selected the song "Thimame" sung by Yiannis Dimitrou, and at a late stage saw that the song was ineligible to represent them as it had been presented to jurors in the Cypriot internal selection for the 1984 contest, where it had finished in 3rd place. This was classed as a breach of the Cypriot rules of selecting their entry at this time as well as an infringement of the Eurovision Song Contest rules. It was a very late decision as the song was already drawn to perform second in the contest, advertised in the Radio Times information about the preview programme of the contest, and appears as song number two in accordance to its initial performance draw, on the record release "Melodi Grand Prix 1988" – the compilation disc of the contest's entries.^[1]

Each performance had a conductor who was maestro to the orchestra, except for Iceland and Italy.^[1]

Participants of the Eurovision Song Contest 1988^[1][2][3][4]

Country	Broadcaster	Artist	Song	Language	Songwriter(s)	Conductor
Austria	ORF	Wilfried	"Lisa Mona Lisa"	German	Ronnie Herbholzheimer Klaus Kofler Wilfried Scheutz	Harald Neuwirth
Belgium	RTBF	Reynaert	"Laissez briller le soleil"	French	Philippe Anciaux Joseph Reynaerts Dany Willem	Dany Willem
Denmark	DR	Hot Eyes	"Ka' du se hva' jeg sa'"	Danish	Søren Bundgaard Keld Heick	Henrik Krogsgaard
Finland	YLE	Boulevard	"Nauravat silmät muistetaan"	Finnish	Kirsti Willberg Pepe Willberg	Ossi Runne
France	Antenne 2	Gérard Lenorman	"Chanteur de charme"	French	Claude Lemesle Gérard Lenorman	Guy Mattéoni
Germany	BR[a]	Maxi and Chris Garden	"Lied für einen Freund"	German	Bernd Meinunger Ralph Siegel	Michael Thatcher
Greece	ERT	Afroditi Fryda	"Clown" (Κλόουν)	Greek	Dimitris Sakislis	Haris Andreadis
Iceland	RÚV	Beathoven	"Sókrates"	Icelandic	Sverrir Stormsker	No conductor
Ireland	RTÉ	Jump the Gun	"Take Him Home"	English	Peter Eades	Noel Kelehan
Israel	IBA	Yardena Arazi	"Ben Adam" (בן אדם)	Hebrew	Boris Dimitshtein Ehud Manor	Eldad Shrem
Italy	RAI	Luca Barbarossa	"Ti scrivo"	Italian	Luca Barbarossa	No conductor
Luxembourg	CLT	Lara Fabian	"Croire"	French	Jacques Cardona Alain Garcia	Régis Dupré
Netherlands	NOS	Gerard Joling	"Shangri-La"	Dutch	Peter de Wijn	Harry van Hoof
Norway	NRK	Karoline Krüger	"For vår jord"	Norwegian	Erik Hillestad Anita Skorgan	Arild Stav
Portugal	RTP	Dora	"Voltarei"	Portuguese	José Calvário José Niza	José Calvário
Spain	TVE	La Década	"La chica que yo quiero (Made in Spain)"	Spanish	Francisco Dondiego Enrique Piero	Javier de Juan
Sweden	SVT	Tommy Körberg	"Stad i ljus"	Swedish	Py Bäckman	Anders Berglund
Switzerland	SRG SSR	Céline Dion	"Ne partez pas sans moi"	French	Nella Martinetti Atilla Şereftuğ	Atilla Şereftuğ
Turkey	TRT	MFÖ	"Sufi (Hey Ya Hey)"	Turkish	Mazhar Alanson Fuat Güner Özkan Uğur	Turhan Yükseler
United Kingdom	BBC	Scott Fitzgerald	"Go"	English	Julie Forsyth	Ronnie Hazlehurst
Yugoslavia	JRT	Srebrna krila[b]	"Mangup" (Мангуп)	Serbo-Croatian	Stevo Cvikić Rajko Dujmić	Nikica Kalogjera

Returning artists[edit]

Bold indicates a previous winner.

Artist	Country	Previous year(s)
Hot Eyes	Denmark	1984, 1985
Boulevard	Finland	1987 (as backing group for Vicky Rosti)
Yardena Arazi	Israel	1976 (as part of Chocolate, Menta, Mastik), 1979 (as presenter)[c]
Reuven Gvirtz (backing singer)		1979 (as part of Milk and Honey)
Yehuda Tamir (backing singer)
Dora	Portugal	1986
Tommy Körberg	Sweden	1969
MFÖ	Turkey	1985

Format[edit]

Graphic design[edit]

Host broadcaster RTÉ, employed Declan Lowney, who was notable for being a director of music videos and youth programming, as director for this edition, in order to revamp the contest to attract and sustain a younger audience. The traditional scoreboard was replaced with two giant Vidiwalls located on either side of the stage, which also projected live images of the performers from the green room where the competitors sat during the votes announcements, and a new computer-generated scoreboard was used.

The stage itself, conceived by Paula Farrell under chief production designer Michael Grogan, was also the largest and most elaborate ever constructed for the Eurovision Song Contest to date. To compensate for the fact that the vast stage took up most of the room in what is really an average size exhibition hall, the director deliberately darkened the hall where the audience was located and refused to use wide angled shots of the audience, in order to create the illusion of the venue being bigger than it actually was.

The Postcards featured the participants doing things in Ireland from culture, to tradition, to sports or sightseeing.

Lowney was also the director of the show's interval act, introduced after the competing songs and before the votes announcement. The interval act was a video of the popular Irish rock group Hothouse Flowers, which was filmed in eleven countries around Europe and was the most expensive music video ever produced in Ireland at the time.

Voting segment[edit]

Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point(s) for its top ten songs. The number of jury members changed this year from 11 which had been the limit since 1975 to 16 which would be used until 1996 when five countries tested the televoting in 1997.

This edition features one of the closest and most fickle-ending votes in the history of the contest. With three countries left to vote, the UK was well in the lead with 133 points against Switzerland's 118. With the third last country, France, only awarding Switzerland one point, the UK looked certain of victory, as even if Switzerland scooped the two final 12s, the UK would only need to gather eleven points from three juries combined to be unbeatable. However, France didn't award the UK any points, and the following country, Portugal, gave the UK a meagre three points while giving the maximum 12 to Switzerland, making the contest blown open between the two countries until the end of the voting.

With the conclusion of voting from the penultimate jury, the UK was holding a five-point lead over Switzerland. As the final jury, that of Yugoslavia, began to award its points in the customary ascending order, a lot of excitement-sighs were heard from the audience to see how the two rivals for victory would fare. Switzerland was the first to be named with six points, edging it into a one-point lead over the UK. After earlier strong votes from most countries to the UK, it seemed highly likely that the UK would be given one of the higher remaining set of points. However, as Yugoslavia announced its seven, eight, ten and twelve points, it transpired that it had awarded the UK no points at all (12 points from Yugoslavia went to France), ^[d] and Switzerland was left with its one-point lead to savour a dramatic triumph.

Contest overview[edit]

This was the second victory for Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest after winning the first edition in 1956. It also remains the last time a song in French has won the contest, the language having dominated the event in earlier years.

The contest helped launch an international career for two now world-famous artists, the winner for Switzerland Céline Dion and Luxembourg's representative Lara Fabian. Canadian Céline Dion was a rising star in the French-speaking world at the time of the contest. Shortly afterwards she started recording songs in English to great worldwide success.^[6] As Dion, Belgian-Canadian Lara Fabian also achieved a successful career after the contest with becoming established in various countries worldwide, with a mainly French-sung repertoire.^[6] The UK entry was written and composed by Julie Forsyth, the daughter of the entertainer Bruce Forsyth who was present. When interviewed afterwards he was particularly annoyed at the Dutch jury not having given a vote to the UK, as they had done some work there.

Results of the Eurovision Song Contest 1988^[7]

R/O	Country	Artist	Song	Points	Place
1	Iceland	Beathoven	"Sókrates"	20	16
2	Sweden	Tommy Körberg	"Stad i ljus"	52	12
3	Finland	Boulevard	"Nauravat silmät muistetaan"	3	20
4	United Kingdom	Scott Fitzgerald	"Go"	136	2
5	Turkey	MFÖ	"Sufi (Hey Ya Hey)"	37	15
6	Spain	La Década	"La chica que yo quiero (Made in Spain)"	58	11
7	Netherlands	Gerard Joling	"Shangri-La"	70	9
8	Israel	Yardena Arazi	"Ben Adam"	85	7
9	Switzerland	Céline Dion	"Ne partez pas sans moi"	137	1
10	Ireland	Jump the Gun	"Take Him Home"	79	8
11	Germany	Maxi and Chris Garden	"Lied für einen Freund"	48	14
12	Austria	Wilfried	"Lisa Mona Lisa"	0	21
13	Denmark	Hot Eyes	"Ka' du se hva' jeg sa'"	92	3
14	Greece	Afroditi Fryda	"Clown"	10	17
15	Norway	Karoline Krüger	"For vår jord"	88	5
16	Belgium	Reynaert	"Laissez briller le soleil"	5	18
17	Luxembourg	Lara Fabian	"Croire"	90	4
18	Italy	Luca Barbarossa	"Ti scrivo"	52	12
19	France	Gérard Lenorman	"Chanteur de charme"	64	10
20	Portugal	Dora	"Voltarei"	5	18
21	Yugoslavia	Srebrna krila[b]	"Mangup"	87	6

Spokespersons[edit]

Each country nominated a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1988 contest are listed below.

•  Iceland – Guðrún Skúladóttir^[8]
•  Ireland – John Skehan^[e]
•  Sweden – Maud Uppling^[10]
•  United Kingdom – Colin Berry^[1]
•  Yugoslavia – Miša Molk^[11]

Detailed voting results[edit]

12 points[edit]

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

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

Broadcasts[edit]

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.^[14]

Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. According to the host Pat Kenny, the contest was also broadcast in Soviet Union and Middle East.

Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries

Country	Broadcaster	Channel(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref.
Austria	ORF	FS1	Ernst Grissemann	[15][16]
Belgium	RTBF	RTBF1	Pierre Collard-Bovy	[17]
	BRT	TV1	Luc Appermont	[18]
Denmark	DR	DR TV, DR P2	Jørgen de Mylius	[19]
Finland	YLE	TV1, 2-verkko [fi]	Erkki Pohjanheimo	[20][21]
France	Antenne 2		Lionel Cassan [fr]	[22][23]
Germany	ARD	Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen	Nicole and Claus-Erich Boetzkes	[15][24]
Greece	ERT	ET1		[25]
Iceland	RÚV	Sjónvarpið, Rás 1	Hermann Gunnarsson	[26]
Ireland	RTÉ	RTÉ 1	Mike Murphy	[27][28]
		RTÉ FM3	Larry Gogan	[29]
Israel	IBA	Israeli Television		[30]
		Reshet Gimel [he]
Italy	RAI	Rai Tre	Daniele Piombi	[31]
Luxembourg	CLT	RTL Télévision		[32]
		RTL plus		[33]
Netherlands	NOS	Nederland 3	Willem van Beusekom	[33][34]
Norway	NRK	NRK Fjernsynet, NRK P2	John Andreassen	[35][36]
Portugal	RTP	RTP1		[37]
Spain	TVE	TVE 2	Beatriz Pécker [es]	[38][39]
Sweden	SVT	TV2	Bengt Grafström	[10][35]
	RR [sv]	SR P3	Kalle Oldby
Switzerland	SRG SSR	SRG Sportkette [de]	Bernard Thurnheer [de]	[15]
		SSR Chaîne sportive	Serge Moisson [fr]	[40]
		TSI Canale sportivo		[41]
Turkey	TRT	TV1		[42]
United Kingdom	BBC	BBC1	Terry Wogan	[1][43][44]
		BBC Radio 2	Ken Bruce
Yugoslavia	JRT	TV Beograd 1, TV Novi Sad, TV Zagreb 1	Oliver Mlakar	[45][46][47][48]
		TV Ljubljana 1 [sl]		[49]

Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries

Country	Broadcaster	Channel(s)	Commentator(s)	Ref.
Australia	SBS	SBS TV[f]		[50]
Canada	CBC	Radio-Canada[g]	Celine Dion and René Angélil	[51][52]
Cyprus	CyBC	RIK, A Programma		[53][54]
Czechoslovakia	ČST	ČST2[h]		[55]
Estonian SSR	ETV[i]			[56]
Hungary	MTV	MTV2		[58]
Jordan	JRTV	JTV2		[59]
Poland	TP	TP1[j]		[60]
Soviet Union	CT USSR	Programme One[i]		[57]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eurovision Song Contest 1988.

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