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1EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1

50 YEARS OF EUROVISION

06/06/1954!

MemoriesInterview with Frank Tappolet, Producer of the Narcissus Festivaldocumentary

Speech made by Pope Pius XII from the Vatican

Eurovision’s founding fathers

The pioneers

Merger

And now . . . tomorrow!Jean Réveillon, Secretary General

50 years of Eurovision: the legal side of the storyWerner Rumphorst, Director, EBU Legal and Public Affairs

What was said over the yearsHow the Eurovision anniversaries were celebrated

5 years: Sir Ian Jacob10 years: The Eurovision news transmission20 years: Behind the screen of Eurovision25 years: Triumphal March30 years: 6 June 198440 years: In the beginning . . .

The Eurovision Song Contest

2005: 50th contest

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EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1

2 EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1

50 YEARS ON

Eurovision network celebrates its jubilee.

Fifty years have passed since a handful of Members decided to launchthemselves into an adventure � with foresight, daring and determination.

At that time you needed a great deal of optimism to invest in the futureof television, which was still at the dawn of its development and trying toescape from national boundaries in the symbolic �season of exchanges1954� which for the first time offered the scarce viewers of the time livepictures from other countries and on a truly European scale.

This very risky undertaking was even more successful than those whobelieved in it had ever hoped, a group that was undoubtedly muchsmaller than the number of sceptics.

Nowadays everything that happens in other countries has becomeaccessible. Nobody is surprised at being able to watch pictures from theother side of the world and discover space or distant planets. In otherwords, to take an active part in life in the universe around us.

The whole world, in all its � often darkest � diversity, is now on showevery day in homes everywhere.

Fragile links providing somewhat fuzzy and shaky pictures in the earlydays of Eurovision have now become high-quality pictures broadcast over




a dense, stable network that has constantly improved thanks to technicalprogress and has spread to all continents.

Programme exchanges are multiplying and diversifying. Year by yearEBU Members have continued to join the network, with total respect forthe freedom of individual organizations and the differences that go tomake up the richness of the group.

Ingenuity and creativity have been able to overcome the technical andlegal hurdles. The challenge taken up in 1954 has been met. And thiscollective effort is still relevant today. The Eurovision network isdestined to continue spreading.

Solutions have always been found to the most difficult problems. Fiftyyears on Eurovision, in the face of a fast-growing technology, must nowaccept a new challenge for the future to keep improving the services itprovides for Members around the world.

Arne WessbergEBU President




06/06/The televised broadcast of theNarcissus Festival of Montreuxmarks the official birth ofEurovision.

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On 6 June 1954 Montreux, nestlingbetween vineyards and Lake Geneva,was the setting for the firstEurovision transmission: an outsidebroadcast of the Narcissus Festivaland a parade of 25 floats covered withflowers, yodellers, singers and adozen brass bands. This wasfollowed by a 90-minute guided tourof the Vatican, which finished witha homily, in Latin, by Pope Pius XII,on the promises and the dangers oftelevision, before he blessed theaudience, urbi et orbi, in fivelanguages.

In the next few days there was thePalio in Sienna, a party for refugeechildren in the Netherlands, anathletics meeting in Glasgow, ayouth camp on the Rhine withthe participation of ChancellorAdenauer, an agricultural fair inDenmark, a procession in theGrand�Place in Brussels, the RoyalNavy parading past Queen Elizabeth,and a horse show in London.

Altogether 18 programmes werebroadcast during this first �EuropeanTelevision Season� of Europeanprogramme exchanges, at the heartof which were the nine programmesexchanged for the World FootballCup. Watching these, people wereglued to the �box� in homes and pubsand in front of shop windows.

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/1954 !


‘Lille Experiment’

Throughout these live broadcasts,engineers who had set up shop inthe Lille town-hall belfry strovefeverishly to prevent or repairnetwork breakdowns.

This control position gave its nameto the operation: the �LilleExperiment�. For everyone else itwas Eurovision, a word invented byan English journalist, GeorgeCampey, who, in an articlepublished in the London EveningStandard on 5 November 1951, hadwritten concerning a BBCprogramme relayed by Dutchtelevision: �Eurovision is a systemof cooperation for the exchange oftelevision programmes between thecountries of Western Europe,including Britain�.

The impact of the Season was duenot only to the programmes, someof which were not particularlystriking, but rather to the intentionto repeat the experiment. After all,the network that had been set up forthe Season was of a more permanent

nature than the circuits patchedtogether for the coronation ofElizabeth II.

However, it was the coronationceremony that released televisionfrom the straitjacket of differentstandards. It was then it becameEuropean, with thousands of French,Belgian, Dutch, German and, ofcourse, British viewers witnessing �for the first time in history in suchgreat numbers � the crowning of asovereign.

After the first Season of exchangesin 1954, nothing could stop the tidalwave of Eurovision. Europe wantedto turn its back on the war, peoplewere starting to travel again, to crossborders, to trade. Internationalexchanges were the order of the day,and television reflected this newatmosphere.

The heads of Eurovision had set twokey engines in motion: the main linesof international exchanges and thepooling of technical facilities. At thesame time an ident was adopted: astar-burst emblem accompanied by

the opening ritornello from Marc-Antoine Charpentier�s Te Deum.

Pivotal date

To try and establish when the ideaof Eurovision first germinated, wecan go back to 8 September 1953.On that day in Lime Grove, in ameeting room of the Londontelevision centre, for the first timedelegates from Europe�s televisionnations got together and decided toorganize the European TelevisionSeason in the summer of 1954.

It was then planned that each countryshould supply a programme to berelayed live in all the otherparticipating countries.

At the meeting of the AdministrativeCouncil held in Monte Carlo inNovember, Marcel Bezençon (SSR),who was behind the idea of aprogramme exchange, explainedwhy a �television committee� shouldbe set up. As the delegates were notconvinced of the usefulness of sucha committee, the discussion draggedon and on. In the end, the Council

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Narcissus Festival, Montreux




proposed the setting up of aprogramme committee, whichwould be accepted by the GeneralAssembly providing that the newcommittee concentrated mainly ontelevision.

While planning for the EurovisionSummer Season in June continued,Marcel Bezençon � together with thehelp of René McCall of the BBC andWladimir Porché of RTF � nowstarted to prepare the ProgrammeCommittee for action.

In February 1954, at the first meetingof the Programme Committee, it wasdecided that the Committee�s Bureaushould be run by the eight represen-tatives of the organizations in thetelevision countries (RTB/BRT/Belgium, DR/Denmark, RTF/France, ARD/Germany, RAI/Italy,NTS/Netherlands, SSR/Switzerland,and BBC/United Kingdom). Twoworking parties were established,one for the broadcasting of films ontelevision (GTV/1) under SergioPugliese (RAI), and the other for livebroadcasts (GTV/2), chaired by Jeand�Arcy. A planning group, chaired

by Edouard Haas (SSR), had beenadded to GTV/2.

Problems

The first stumbling block theProgramme Committee came upagainst was a concept for planningthe programmes. At a televisionforum in Sandpoort (Netherlands)comprising television journalistsfrom eight European countries, onlya few topics likely to be ofinternational interest were found; theBritish journalists merely suggested�Another Coronation�.

The clearing of films and technicalequipment through customs postsproved to be a source of problems,not to mention the performers. Forinstance, the BBC was planning tocontribute its famous variety showCafé Continental, presented byunionized performers who, becauseof the expected increase in theaudience figures (close on 3.5 millionviewers), demanded an increase of50% in their fee. A compromise wasfound: the matter would be settledby the EBU Administrative Council.On the other hand, there was noagreement in Denmark with theTivoli artistes. The programmeRendezvous in Copenhagen wascancelled and replaced by a prizecattle show, eliciting this commentfrom Der Spiegel: �Thank God cowsdon�t belong to unions.�

Despite everything, the EBU wasdetermined to make a success of theEurovision season.

The most reliable way of ensuringthis was the planned coverage of theWorld Football Cup in Bern, forwhich Marcel Bezençon hadnegotiated the television rights withthe chairman of the Swiss FootballAssociation, Mr Thomma. �Howmuch are you offering?� asked thelatter. �Nothing,� said Bezençon.�Are you joking?� Marcel Bezençonwas not joking, but nonetheless heoffered to make up any shortfall in

Lille’s town-hall belfry

A. Vogelsang, Mayor of Chatelard (Montreux)

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Eurovision operation that had takenplace in June 1954.

The prospect of television being ableto serve the cause of internationalunderstanding and the opening up offrontiers was tempting. It seemed lessimportant that as early as 1954, andin contrast to what was true in theold IBU (International BroadcastingUnion) and OIR (Organisation Inter-nationale de Radiodiffusion) times� the word Europe was now beingused to mean western Europe.

The Study Group Television now feltconfident enough to get theAdministrative Council and theGeneral Assembly to accept aTelevision Committee at last, thename of which seemed to precludethe issue of radio programmeexchanges. On the one hand, theLegal Committee of the EBU

considered it very important toemphasize the unity of television andradio, and thus ultimately of the EBUitself. On the other, the nameTelevision Committee created theimpression that the new committeewas responsible for all televisionmatters, which the technical and legalpeople saw as a limitation of theircompetence.

At the Administrative Council meetingin Monte Carlo in November, MarcelBezençon explained the reasons whythe Study Group had unanimouslyproposed setting up a �TelevisionCommittee�, pointing out that, asthere were certain matters on whichthe Study Group could not touch ifit were to remain within the limitsof its mandate, he would like, on astrictly personal basis, to propose tothe Administrative Council not togive consideration to the proposals

gate money to a maximum ofCHF10,000.

Leaflets announcing the broadcastsand advertising television in generalhad been published in the variousparticipating countries. In Germany,the price of television sets was fallingsignificantly. Obviously the televisionindustry also thought the time hadcome for a breakthrough. People whohad not thought of it before wereconsidering buying their own set.

The rest we know.

The saga

To ensure the success of the Season,Marcel Bezençon fought two battlesat the same time: persuade the EBUto turn his idea of programmeexchanges into a ProgrammeCommittee and to expand on the

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made by the Study Group withoutagreeing to extend the competencyof the proposed Committee so as tocover all questions of programmesand programme exchanges, both inrespect of sound broadcasting andvisual broadcasting, and thus tomake the proposed new organ averitable �Programme Committee�.The reasons for this amendmentwere to be found, on the one hand,in the importance of affirming, vis-à-vis third parties, the indissolubilityof the problems of sound broad-casting and television, and, on theother hand, to make it clear that thescope of the new Committee waslimited to �programme� aspects ofthe questions under study.

The events that produced theProgramme Committee and Euro-vision might never have happenedif the careful and thorough Sir Ian,

who did not think much of newcommittees and hasty decisions, hadnot been been away just long enough(he returned to the Ministry ofDefence for two years) for MarcelBezençon to get his plans forprogramme exchanges and theProgramme Committee accepted.

Now that the Committee had anofficial status, it met more often andlaunched exchange projects that hadbeen previously been planned,criticized, rejected and accepted.

Reinforcements

After the Eurovision Summer Season,Austria, Luxembourg, and Monacobecame the next organizations toextend Eurovision territory.

In Austria, the start of television hadbeen delayed because Allied per-

mission was needed for broad-casting. In the autumn of 1953 therelevant bans were lifted and a regulartelevision service started in January1957. Since 1955, Austria hadalready served as a second Euro-vision bridge across the Alps to Italy,and later also to Yugoslavia.

With Luxembourg and Monaco,which both adopted the French 819-line standard, two comparativelysmall private television companiesjoined the ranks of Eurovision in1955: CLT (Compagnie Luxem-bourgeoise de Télédiffusion), asubsidiary of Radio Luxembourg,and Radio Monte-Carlo (RMC). Bothhad a large part of their audience inFrance. In the Scandinaviancountries, regular television servicesstarted from 1956, at first mainly inthe more densely populated southernregions around the capitals. Verysoon, however, the number oftelevision licences shot up andreached the level of the �big� tele-vision countries by 1960, at least asa proportion of their populations.Around this time, the Scandinaviancountries, including Denmark andlater Iceland, started to organize asmall television union of their owncalled �Nordvision�. Its symbol wasthe Northern Lights.

Finland was doubly important withinthe Eurovision network as a bridgeto the OIRT countries in general andto the Soviet Union in particular.First of all, Finnish stations were ableto receive the Baltic programmes ofthe Soviet Union, which made itpossible to exchange programmes withthe Soviet Union. The first programmeto be transmitted in this way was theceremony in honour of Yuri Gagarinafter his space flight. Secondly, Finlandwas then the only country to belongto both the EBU and the OIRT(International Radio and TelevisionOrganization). For this reason, Finlandwas able to offer valuable assistanceduring the first attempts, in around1958, at reaching an understandingbetween the two unions.

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Mem

covered market hall. No luck, thatwas where the ambulance wassupposed to park! It had to go andfind itself another convenient spot!

We were arriving on totally newground but we received a great dealof help from the manager of thelocal Tourist Office, RaymondJaussi, who knew a lot about theneeds of television on account of hiscountless trips to the USA.

Patrick Jaquin: After thepictures had been taken andrelayed to the OB van, thenwhere did they go, and how?

They were transmitted via theRochers-de-Naye, where there wasa mobile relay station, and from

An interview with Frank Tappolet,Producer of the Narcissus Festival documentary

The first is that Swiss television hadbeen in the experimental stage forjust a year: in Zurich it had atransmitter for each region andGeneva had a local television station,a sort of precursor for the presentTélévision Suisse Romande. So wearrived from Zurich to film theNarcissus Festival with every bit ofequipment because in Montreuxthere were no television facilities.

We had an English OB van (YPE)with three black-and-white camerasand commentator equipmentprovided by Radio Suisse Romandeas we didn�t have our own.

My second memory is that thepeople in Montreux were not at allfamiliar with installing an OB van,cameras, and commentator pos-itions. So we had to improvise.

Two cameras were set up along theparade route, on the site of the main

stands. When we started installingthem we were told, �No, not there.Those places are reserved for themunicipal councillors, you can seebest from there.� So I immediatelyreplied, �Well, if you can see bestfrom here, this is where we�ll shootfrom.� Of course, everything workedout in the end. The third camera wasset up on the lakeside to film thelandscape, the lake, and the Dentsdu Midi mountain range, weatherpermitting.

When it came to the OB van, it wasthe length of the cables we weregiven that decided where we wouldpark it! We ended up next to the

I remember several things:



mories

there they went to Chasseral and thennorth in the direction of the BlackForest, and south in the direction ofMonte Generoso, and from there toItaly.

PJ: Do you remember what theweather was like that day?

On Saturday 5 it was very overcast,not very encouraging and the paradeorganizers warned us that if it wasthe same weather the next day it waslikely that no-one would be in thestands and so there wouldn�t be anyparade! It was Raymond Jaussi whosaved the day by declaring, �We�llbe parading even if there�s no-onethere, because there has to be aparade for the television!�

By a stroke of luck the weathercleared up and we even had somesunshine and our pictures were fine.

PJ: What was your main worry?

We weren�t the only ones to haveworries. They also had them inEngland because it was the first timethat the BBC was to broadcast aprogramme it didn�t have completecontrol over. As we were anexperimental service the BBCdecided to have me chaperoned byan experienced BBC producer. I have

to admit he was the epitome ofEnglish distinction, and he wasgracious enough to leave us in peace.

My concern was the commentators.It was the first time that eightcommentators were to work on thesame pictures at once. I had toexplain to them that it wasn�t worththeir while calling me to say, �Couldyou just point that camera a bitfurther left, etc.�. I told them Iwouldn�t be paying attention to anyof them, and that rather surprisedthem but they did as they were told.

PJ: And technically, no hitches?

No, nothing.

PJ: Were you feeling confident?

Well, of course we were confident!It was the early days of television.We had no idea of the risk of thingsgoing wrong.

But there was one thing. I wanted tostart the programme with a shot of

Château de Chillon just along thelake. But the camera we�d placed onthe lakeside couldn�t see it. I cameup with the idea to send a cameraout on a boat 100 metres from theshore to film. At the dress rehearsalthe boat�s engine caught fire!

So we just took a straightforward stillphoto of the Château de Chillon thata camera assistant moved about justas if we were filming from a boat.You see, we were already cheatingin those days . . . !

PJ: And 50 years on, what doyou think of the institutiontelevision has become?

Obviously we were privilegedbecause we didn�t have any money,we needed to invent everything andmake do with very few facilities.There were no opinion polls, noadvertising. I really think that Iexperienced what we could calltelevision�s golden age. So you canguess from that what I think oftelevision nowadays.

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Pope �Non è forse una fausta coincidenzache in questo giorno, in cui la Chiesasolennemente commemora ladiscesa dello Spirito Santo nelCenacolo e la prima predicazionedell�Apostolo Pietro alle moltitudiniavide di verità e di pace, Ci sia datod�indirizzarCi personalmente a voi,spettatori europei della Televisione,e di dichiararvi quanto grande è laNostra gioia nel venirvi in qualchemodo incontro fin nella intimità deivostri focolari?

�Ecco che giungono oggi a felice esitoi diuturni sforzi, le ardue ricerche,gli esperimenti innumerevolicompiuti così da singoli scienziati,come da gruppi di studiosi e danazioni, per stabilire tra i popolieuropei, e forse fra qualche tempocon altri continenti, un nuovo mezzodi scambi intellettuali e artistici.Senza dubbio era già possibilemediante la radio di portare fin nellevostre dimore parole d�insegna-mento, d�incoraggiamento o diconforto. Ma chi non è bramoso dicontatto immediato?

�Per quanto fervido ed efficace undiscorso possa apparire, esso divieneanche più vivo e commovente,quando la prossimità dell�oratorepermette di cogliere sul suo volto lepiù lievi sfumature dei più soavisentimenti e d�imprimere nellamemoria i lineamenti di lui.

�Perciò siamo lieti di salutare l�altaintrapresa della Union européennede radiodiffusion, grazie alla quale,con la collaborazione degli organis-mi responsabili della Televisione eil tenace lavoro dei tecnici incaricatidel buon andamento delle stazioniemittenti e riceventi, è potuta sorgerequesta rete europea di trasmissionedelle immagini. Le esperienzeeffettuate con favorevole successo glianni scorsi attraverso la Manicahanno reso possibile l�elaborazionedel programma, che ha oggi inizio,ed è �il primo che la Televisioneitaliana invia alle nove Televisionieuropee nel quadro dei primi scambiinternazionali di Televisione�.

�Le fonctionnement d�un réseaueuropéen de télévision répondd�ailleurs à la fois au désir destechniciens et à celui des spectateurs.Comme toute invention récente, latélévision est avide de prospecter sespropres possibilités. Elle a découvertque son point d�application préféréétait de saisir les manifestations les

A first: Pope Pius XII in fivelanguages and via Eurovision



plus intéressantes de la vie humaineau moment même où elles seproduisent. Qu�il s�agisse d�activitésscientifiques, artistiques ou spor-tives, des aspects innombrables dela technique moderne ou des réali-sations sociales, chacun aspire àl�heure actuelle non seulement à enêtre informé dans le plus bref délai,mais à s�y associer immédiatement,à en être témoin, si possible.

�De plus, la difficulté de réaliser unprogramme de haute qualité invitaità une collaboration qui divisât lescharges, tout en élargissant le champd�investigation directe, il importe deremarquer en effet que, si la camérade télévision capte le réel de façonsynthétique, elle le soumet cepen-dant à une analyse plus minutieuseque l�objectif cinématographique ; àcause des dimensions réduites del�écran récepteur, elle préférera lesimages en gros plans, aux person-nages peu nombreux, dont elle saisitles expressions les plus fugitives.Aucune hésitation des interprètes nelui échappe, et l�attention concentréedu spectateur, que n�influence pasl�ambiance d�une assistance com-pacte, ne pardonne ni les faiblesseséventuelles du sujet ni les négligencesde présentation.

�La télévision peut donc jeter partoutun regard curieux et s�introduire au


Pius XII


c�ur des événements. Elle est parlà un instrument privilégié d�explo-ration humaine, un moyen efficacede mettre les hommes en contact lesuns avec les autres, de leur révélerplus vite, plus sûrement et avec unepuissance insoupçonnée de pénétra-tion, les formes innombrables de lavie contemporaine,

�Kaum hat sich indes dieweittragende Bedeutung diesesWerkzeugs zur Verbreitung vonKenntnissen und Wissen gezeigt, alssich schon gleich ein heiklesProblem zu Wort meldet: Wie stehtes um den sittlichen Wert der zumTeil neuen Welt, die das Fernsehennoch viel umfassender undanziehender eröffnet als derRundfunk und der Film? Ist es nichtmöglich, dass sich neben Bestemauch anderes findet; das ein sittsamesEmpfinden verletzt? Ist es deshalbnicht doch wohl die erste undselbstverständliche Pflicht derFernseh-Unternehmen wie derZuschauer, eine umsichtige undpassende Auswahl zu treffen? DerGesellschaftskörper von heute weistbereits zu viele offene Wunden auf,die ihm die zersetzende Tätigkeiteiner bestimmten Art von Presse,Film und Rundfunk geschlagenhaben. Wird vielleicht das neue nochwirksamere Mittel das Übel nurverschlimmern, oder wird man vonBeginn an sich bereit finden, etwaswirklich Aufbauendes und echtGesundes zu schaffen?

�Die Sorge um den nötigen Absatzverleitet die Unternehmen oft zurVerbreitung von Unterhaltungsstoff




und Stücken, die auf die minderedlen menschlichen Instinkteabgestimmt sind und ihnenschmeicheln. Es genügt nicht, dieFolgen eines solchen Übels,besonders die diesseitstrunkeneselbstische Vergnügungs sucht mitdem verschlossenen harten Herzengegenüber der Not und denWünschen der Mitmenschen zubeklagen. Man muss in geeigneterWeise vorbeugen. Will die Televisionihre glänzenden Versprechen halten,so möge sie sich hüten, sich derbilligen Künste zu bedienen, die nichweniger dem guten Geschmack alsdem sittlichen Empfinden so sehrwidersprechen ; sie möge davonAbstand nehmen, sich auf dieunnatürlichen Erzeugnisse eineskranken Zeitgeistes einzulassen; essei ihr vielmehr darum zu tun, diewahre Schönheit zur Anerkennungzu bringen und alles, was dieMenscheitskultur und besonders diechristliche Religion an Gesundemund Hohem und Bestemhervorgebracht hat und hervorbringt.

�Perhaps one might here call specialattention at the desire of a televisionaudience to see reflected on thescreen some of its own deepestaspirations, its ideal of humanbrotherhood, of justice and of peace,its love of family and country, andalso the fact that it is a part of asociety whose purpose transcendsthe limits of this material world orbelongs to a religious group. We arethinking in particular of those of you,whom sickness or infirmity confineto your homes, and who would liketo find the consolation and comfort

they need more than others by beingpresent in spirit at religiousceremonies and uniting their prayerto that of the Church. From now ontelevision, better than radio, willbring them into the sanctuary. Thiswill not of course take the place ofbeing present actually, and in personat religious rites; but at least it willhelp to create the atmosphere ofreverence and recollection thatsurrounds liturgical functions, andbring the audience to share thefervent prayer of faith and adorationthat rises heavenwards from agathering of the faithful. May thisfirst international programme, thatbrings together eight countries ofWestern Europe, be at once a symboland a promise! Symbol it is of unionbetween the nations, and in onerespect, to a degree, it initiates thatunion. For must not knowledge gobefore appreciation and esteem? Letthe European nations then learn toknow each other better; let them behappy and proud to display thenational beauties of their countriesand its cultural riches; let them opento others the deeper feelings of theirspirit and their sincere desire forunderstanding and cooperation.How many prejudices, how manybarriers will thus fall! Lack of mutualconfidence, selfishness will lessen,and above all a renewed ambitionwill be stirred to contributesomething to the world communityfor the common good. Such is Ourhope.

�On this day of Pentecost may thedivine Spirit, sent to enlighten theminds of men on this earth and to

inflame their hearts with love of theSupreme Good, find in this productof human toil an instrument toextend the reign of mutualunderstanding and concord amongall peoples. With an earnest prayerfor this gift precious beyond others,and from a heart filled with love forall We impart the Apostolic Blessing.

�Tot slot groeten Wïj alleNederlands-sprekende toeschouwersalsmede het gehele Nederlandsevolk, wiens welzijn Ons na aan hethart ligt en wiens lotgevallen Wij metwarme belangstelling volgen.

�Beminde Zonen en Dochters, Wijsmeken van harte Gods overvloedigeZegen over U af.�




Marcel Bezençon

Eurov



17EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1 17

Jean d’Arcy

Father of operational Eurovision, firstDirector of Programmes, he ardentlysupported Marcel Bezençon�s ideaof creating a television �programmeexchange�. He was chairman of theAd Hoc Programme Committee setup at the Paris meeting in January1954 to finalize arrangements for theSummer Season. He was head ofnetwork at the programme coordi-nation centre established for theSummer Season in Lille (France).

Marcel Bezençon

Founding father of TV programmeexchanges, he launched the exchangein September 1953 and chaired theLondon meeting where the SummerSeason was elaborated. He was thenChair of the first EBU ProgrammeCommittee (Switzerland).

founding fathers



In the early 1950s television was awholly new medium with anuncertain future whose costs werehard to estimate. Few countriesbroadcast noteworthy televisionprogrammes and no uniformstandard had been able to imposeitself on transmitters and receivers.Television was far from being a cast-iron investment. What seems soobvious today had not even beentried. Television was merely an affairfor visionaries: an idea, a field oftechnical experimentation: not amedium, still less a mass medium.

The idea of Eurovision programmeexchanges and, finally, of the wholewest European television system didnot stem from one individual butfrom a small group of pioneerswielding influence in key positions.They included the director of SwissRadio Marcel Bezençon, the Frenchprogramme-maker Jean d�Arcy, oneof the very first to be involved inFranco-British exchanges, along withhis colleagues Wladimir Porché andStéphane Mallein or the BritonsCecil McGivern, Martin Pulling,Tony Bridgewater, Imlay Newbiggin-Watts and Peter Dimmock. Theycould rely for support and assistanceon the experience of radio pioneerssuch as Théo Fleischmann (firstStudy Group Chair and interimPresident), without whom the

creation of the Programme Commit-tee might have been postponed untilmuch later.

Innovative flair

Though not always by commonconsent, and rarely unanimous, theGroup became active in clearingaway the first, hitherto insuperablelegal and diplomatic obstacles. Theadvocates of programme exchangesneeded the help of administratorsendowed with great innovative flair,including Léo Wallenborn, andjurists with a feel for conventions andtheir necessary interpretation, suchas Georges Straschnov of theAdministrative Office, or Philip deVries, Maurice Lenoble and HansBrack of the Legal Committee.

Dozens of engineers from thebroadcasting organizations involved,whose names figure in no officialreport, devoted themselves selflessly,enthusiastically, to adapting stand-ards converters, radio links and waveamplifiers until the long awaitedpicture finally flickered up on thescreen.

vision’s


Jean d’Arcy

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Henri Anglès d’Auriac

Director of the EBU Technical Centrefrom 1950 to 1956, he played aleading role in the technicaldevelopment of Eurovision (France).

Tony H. Bridgewater

Chair of the EBU Ad Hoc TechnicalCommittee set up at the Parismeeting in January 1954 (UnitedKingdom).

George Campey

London journalist, coined the term�Eurovision�. He later joined the BBC(United Kingdom).

Roger Clausse

Member of 1953 TV Study Group,member of TV ProgrammeCommittee (Belgium).

Jack Treeby-Dickinson

Chief engineer at the EBUTechnical Centre from 1950 to1972, he was closely involved indeveloping the Eurovision networkand in 1954 collaborated in theoperation of the Lille TechnicalCoordination Centre (UnitedKingdom).

Paolo Grilli

Member of the Programme Commit-tee Bureau. (Italy)

Édouard Haas

Member of 1953 Study Group andof working groups GTV1 (filmexchanges) and GTV2 ( l iveexchanges) (Switzerland).

Henrik Hahr

Sveriges Radio Director of Pro-grammes and member of theProgramme Committee Bureau,Director of the EBU AdministrativeOffice (Sweden).



19EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1 19DOSSIERS UER – 2004/1

Georges Hansen

Closely involved in the developmentof Eurovision as successor to Henrid�Anglès at the head of the EBUTechnical Centre (Belgium).

Eric Griffiths

Senior engineer then chief engineerat the EBU Technical Centre. Madea widely acknowledged contributionto the development of the Euro-vision network (United Kingdom).

Jens Fr. Lawaetz

Director of Television, member of1953 Study Group and of theProgramme Committee Bureau(Denmark).

Henk Maas

First Secretary of Eurovision(Netherlands).

Stéphane Mallein

Head of Lille Coordination Centreset up for the Summer Season(France).

Imlay Newbiggin-Watts

Co-responsible for network, withJean d�Arcy, at the Lille ProgrammeCoordination Centre for the SummerSeason (United Kingdom).

Timothy O’Brien

Creator of the first Eurovision logo.A stage designer celebrated in anumber of countries (UnitedKingdom).

Edward L.E. Pawley

Chair of the EBU Technical Commit-tee when Eurovision came into being(United Kingdom).

Werner Pleister

Member of the Television Pro-gramme Committee Bureau(Germany).

M.J.L. Pulling

Chair of the London TechnicalConference held in 1953 to establisha European permanent televisionnetwork. Chair of the EBU WorkingParty �L� � international TV relays(United Kingdom).

Jan Willem Rengelink

Father of the news exchange: EVN-1regular exchanges started on 29 May1961. Member of 1953 TV StudyGroup and Programme Commit-tee Bureau. Responsible for launchingEurovision news exchange(Netherlands).

Michel Robida

Member of 1953 TV Study Group,involved in meetings of the Pro-gramme Committee Bureau. (France)

Georges Straschnov

Director of the EBU Legal Depart-ment, responsible for legal questionsraised by the first Eurovision relays(France).

Léo Wallenborn

Director of EBU AdministrativeOffice (1950�58) when Eurovisioncame into being, secretary of the TVStudy Group (Belgium).


Jens Fr.Lawaetz

Édouard Haas

Henrik Hahr

EdwardL.E. Pawley

GeorgesStraschnov


The pioFor this programme, Calais en fête,there was no means of inter-converting the line standards � 405horizontal picture lines in Britain,819 in France � and the BBC hadsent a team and equipment to Franceto transmit the pictures live fromCalais by radio link.

The picture, passably viewable inBritain but not at all in France,nevertheless proved it was possibleto exchange television pictures cross-Channel via the airwaves, and, ifcompatibility problems wereovercome, why not between severalcountries and even throughoutEurope?

On 5 October 1950 MarcelBezençon tabled a more detailedplan for the EBU to study at its nextCouncil in Ouchy/Lausanne(Switzerland).

Sir Ian Jacob, EBU president, proposedthat the supporters of the idea drawup a concrete proposal, approach theAdministrative Office and, if the plan

At Torquay on 13 February 1950,delegates of broadcasting organ-izations from 23 countries of theEuropean Broadcasting Area asdefined by the ITU (InternationalTelecommunication Union) set upthe European Broadcasting Union.

No one mentioned television (tooexotic), still less the idea of Euro-vision. The proceedings wereconfined to radio and drawing up theUnion�s statutes.

It was only at the second meeting ofthe EBU Administrative Council, atRapallo in May 1950, that MarcelBezençon tabled his plan for tele-vision programme exchanges. Themeeting was less than enthusiastic.

The Calais experiment

Nevertheless, things were pro-gressing and lawyers and admin-istrators were taken unawares on 27August 1950 by the �Calaisexperiment�, the first televisionlinkup between France and the UK.

1,585 days of discussions plusa coronation, to see –a narcissus . . .




was approved, refer it to the Admin-istrative Council.

Circular

The Administrative Office DirectorLéo Wallenborn sent a circular tomembers in which he spoke of the�market for television programmeexchanges�. He asked for views onthe creation of a permanent commit-tee. Appended to the circular wasthe Bezençon proposal. Only tenwritten replies reached him: theythought the idea good but listed thetechnical and legal problems it raised(copyright and performer demands).

The Legal Committee raised otherobjections, such as film rights, sportsrights and the right of privacy. In theCommittee�s view each of thesequestions had to be settledindividually in and with eachcountry before a programmeexchange could be thought of.

In May 1951 Marcel Bezençonsubmitted his plan to the AdministrativeCouncil again, and the Council,meeting in Geneva, approved thecreation of a study group, chaired byThéo Fleischmann and with amembership comprising BBC, RTF andRAI and a Scandinavian representative� Norway, Sweden and Finland havingshown keen interest.

Berne Convention

In August of the same year the�Berne Convention for the pro-tection of literary and artistic works�came into force, thereby establishingthe important legal preliminary forinternational programme exchangeplans. This was because the newversion mentioned, for the first time,�recordings� without distinguishingbetween picture and sound.

Eurovision

The term �Eurovision� first appearedon 5 November 1951 from the penof George Campey, a Britishjournalist, in an Evening Standardarticle on the future of television inEurope. Pronounceable in allEuropean languages, the wordEurovision took root and offered theidea of a Europe united by a commonvision.

So the concept of a programmeexchange was baptized even beforeits creation was decided!

In January 1951 the British andFrench engineers and programmeheads again took the first steps.Wladimir Porché, of Radio-Télé-vision Française, wrote to Sir IanJacob that BBC and RTF had studiedthe possibility of a bilateral



oneers


programme exchange and proposedthat the EBU address all the attendantproblems, in particular copyright,legal aspects and technical questions.In fact BBC and RTF told the EBU �politely � that France and GreatBritain were at any time prepared togo it alone with the programmeexchange.

The EBU decision-making processthen started to speed up and thequestion of programme exchangeswas high on the agenda for the May1952 Administrative Council.

Tribute was paid to the Franco-British initiative. On 21 April 1952the first Paris�London programmelinkup was a success. Thanks to anefficient standards converter thepicture was viewable on both sidesof the Channel. During the summerthe British and French were tobroadcast joint programmes for anentire week.

In October 1952 the AdministrativeCouncil congratulated the Pro-gramme Exchange Study Group onits work and urged it to keep upthe good work. The exchange ofprogrammes between Britain andFrance was now a practical reality.

Shortly afterwards the EBU GeneralAssembly, with its new president Sir

Ian Jacob, entrusted the overalldirection of the Study Group toMarcel Bezençon.

The six

In 1952, only six broadcastingorganizations in Western Europe hadthe capacity to make their owntelevision programmes.

Britain and France had restarted workin television right after the end of thewar and had therefore been able toestablish a considerable lead. Germanyand Italy soon joined them as televisionbroadcasters. These countries werealso able to build on their pre-warexperience and, together with Britainand France, soon achieved the highestlevels of television activity, at least inabsolute figures. It was not long beforethese television nations came to becalled the �Big Four�. Television alsogot off to an early start in Denmarkand the Netherlands. Even if theabsolute figures were bound to belower in these countries than in thosewith larger populations, the pioneeringachievements in television were atleast as impressive. In relative figures,television density in these smallcountries often increased faster thanin the big ones.

Britain was particularly importantfor the development of the European

22

television system. The BBC hadresumed broadcasting in June 1946,maintaining the 405-line standard inuse before the war. As early as 1952a government White Paper permittedthe establishment of a rival privatecommercial broadcasting company.The 1954 Television Act enshrinedthe concept of a regionalized,commercially funded broadcastingcompany. In September 1955 the ITA(Independent Television Authority)started broadcasting.

In the areas covered by bothcompanies, the BBC lost up to 70%of its viewers and thus became thefirst European public televisionsupplier to encounter the problemof private competition. Furthermore,the name �Independent Television�created the false impression that theBBC was a government institution,although both companies had thesame legal status.

Technologically, British televisionwas the undisputed leader in Europeduring the 1950s. New technologiessuch as videotape recording andcolour television were invariablytested first by the BBC. The rest ofEurope usually followed theassessment of the British experts. Bygiving the EBU generous technicalsupport and providing a number ofhighly qualified specialists, the BBC




and ITV influenced the style ofEuropean television for a long time.

The first television programmes inFrance went out in 1945, at first in441-line format, using theinstallations left behind by theGerman occupiers. After the �DécretMitterrand�, the 819-line standardwas introduced in 1948. Officially,this was to protect the Frencheconomy from European com-petition. In the event, the outcomewas rather to protect the Europeancompetitors from France. The 819-line standard required very powerfultransmitters which were expensivebut still had only a relatively limitedrange. Whereas in France only 15%of the country and 30% of thepopulation were able, technically, toreceive television in 1958, in Britainthe figure was almost 100%. Onlyin 1964 did it become possible fornearly the whole of the Frenchpopulation to receive televisionbroadcasts.

West Germany opted for differenttechnical and organizationalsolutions. After the unconditionalsurrender of the German Reich on 8May 1945, the victorious Alliesimposed a general ban on all radioand television broadcasting inGermany. Radio broadcasts forinformation purposes were soonpermitted again, but televisionbroadcasting was allowed to resumeonly in 1948. The British occupationforces as well as NWDR (Nordwest-deutscher Rundfunk), which had

started work in the British zonestraight after the war, agreed to thelaunch of a television station. Evenbefore this, German televisionspecialists had agreed on 625 linesas the future standard.

At the beginning transmissions werepossible only every other day becauseof the lengthy and costly preparationsthat had to be made each time. Atfirst the number of television setsand viewers was also very small,since mass production got under wayonly hesitantly and the sets availablewere very expensive. While theFrench system was centralized, inWest Germany public servicebroadcasting organizations wereestablished by the Lander. One byone, these started transmissions oftelevision programmes. By July 1950the public service organizationsNWDR (North), SWF (South-West),RB (Bremen), HR (Hesse), BR(Bavaria), and SDR (South) had gottogether and formed the ARD(Arbeitsgemeinschaft der offentlich-rechtlichen RundfunkanstaltenDeutschland). These organizationscame to an agreement on televisionin 1953 when they signed a contractfor a joint German television channel,DFS, which was transmitted for thefirst time in November 1954.

Fundamentally different again was theDutch system, which was based onthe right of all relevant and organizedgroups in Dutch society to expresstheir views publicly. Thus thevertical structure of Dutch society

became the formative principle. Thestructure established along theselines by Dutch radio as early as the1920s served as a model fortelevision. For television inparticular, a foundation wasestablished (Nederlandse TelevisieStichting, NTS) to organizebroadcasting schedules. Foundermembers of NTS were the four bigradio organizations: AVRO (liberal),KRO (Catholic), NCRV (Protestant),and VARA (Socialist). Each stationwas allocated its share ofbroadcasting time according to thenumber of subscribers to its ownassociation�s radio magazine. In1969, the two umbrellaorganizations, NTS and NRU(Nederlandse Radio Unie, thecorresponding radio organization),merged to become NOS(Nederlands OmroepprogrammaStichting).

Thus in 1952, the countries inEurope that made television did soalong very different lines of socialorganization and using threedifferent and mutually incompatibleline systems.

By 1951 the CCIR (ComiteConsultatif International desRadiocommunications), a sub-organization of the InternationalTelecommunication Union (ITU, aUN specialized agency), had formeda working group led by the Swissprofessor M. Gerber on technicalcriteria for a common line standard.The so-called Gerber standard of 625




lines was accepted in these talks asthe new norm, although not byBritain and France.

The Coronation

On 6 February 1952 King George VIdied in London. While this was anoccasion for mourning in Britain, themonarch�s death was also a greatopportunity for the BBC: in thefollowing year � allowing enoughtime for preparations � his daughter,Princess Elizabeth, would becrowned Queen of England in agrand ceremony. This would be theoccasion for a live outside broadcaston a really large scale. In earlyautumn 1952, the first contacts weremade between the BBC and theDutch, Belgian and French broad-casting organizations. Later cor-respondence suggests these contactswere probably made by phone. On19 November Cyril Conner, head ofliaison at the BBC�s ExternalServices, informed his Dutchcolleague, NTS controller JanWillem Rengelink, of the BBC�sintention to make the Coronationavailable to television organizationson the continent. First, the BBCplanned to make a standard celluloidfilm which could be taken over andput on air, albeit with some delay.The second proposal, however, wasfor a live broadcast: � . . . RTF arehoping to make arrangements for atelevision relay from London toParis, using means similar to thosewe employed for the relays fromParis to London via Lille last July.From Dover onwards into France thetechnical arrangements will ofcourse be the responsibility of RTFand I mention this because anypossible relays desired in countriesclose to France will presumablyrequire to be linked with the FrenchTelevision Service circuit and nottaken direct [sic.] from the BBC�(�Coronation� correspondence file,OM Hilversum).

When the London meeting actuallytook place on 3 December, with

Martin Pulling from the BBC inthe chair, it was attended (apartfrom Polling�s colleagues TonyBridgewater and Imlay Newbiggin-Watts) by the French representativesd�Arcy and Mallein, Mol and deVlaam from the Netherlands, andJ.F. Lawaetz from Denmark.

Denmark had to rely on receivingthe television signals via Germanyand was therefore unable to give anyconcrete answers, but in principleeverything was ready for a televisionrelay from Britain via France,Belgium (which did not even haveits own television yet), theNetherlands, West Germany and allthe way up to Denmark. Participantsagreed to keep each other informedon the state of the preparations onthe 15th of each month.

On 17 January, Werner Nestel(NWDR) informed all countriesinvolved that NWDR was ready toenter the trial phase and sent anumber of concrete proposals andsome technical information.

It is clear that the big experiment ofa mulitilateral transmission wasreally and truly under way.

The technical experts in each countrystarted sorting out the conditions fora successful transmission, and thebroadcasting organizations tried toclear away some of the legal andpolitical problems, which did notalways make things easier. Originallythe necessary standards conversionwas supposed to be done in Cassel,the first relay point in France. Butthe RTF suddenly objected for�reasons of principle� against anyconversion on French territory. Forsimilar reasons, Belgium refused toallow any conversion on its territory.Nevertheless, by early February 1953�Operation Coronation� was largelyassured.

On 9 February 1953 the participantsof the scheme informed the EBU. Itwould hardly have been possible to

inform the EBU much later than thiswithout being rather rude, to say theleast as the Television Study Groupwas to meet in Paris on 23 March.

As head of the Study GroupTelevision, Marcel Bezençonrecognized the opportunity topromote his plan for a programmeclearing house. For this, exactly thekind of network was needed as theone for the Coronation. It was clearfrom the state of preparations for theCoronation broadcast that somecountries were perfectly able to geta live programme exchange goingwithout any help from the EBU.

In fact, the five countries that hadjoined together for the Coronationbroadcast were quite obviously nottoo keen on involving the hithertorather heavy-going EBU. MarcelBezençon, however, had to turn tothe EBU for the realization of hisown idea. As the director general of

24

The Coronation




The following two points werep h r a s e d i n t h e m i n u t e s a sfollows:

· To offer to these authorities, aswell as to the international bodieson which they are represented,fullest cooperation of all theorgans and competent services ofthe Union.

· To instruct the PermanentServices of the Unionimmediately to take appropriatesteps, by way of addressingenquiries to member organ-izations, or possibly theauthorities concerned, toassemble all documentationrelative not only to the setting upof this network, but also on theconditions, whatever they mightbe (technical, economic,financial, legal, political and soforth) connected with thisoperation.

the SSR he was not yet able to bringhis own television service to theexchange experiments. Only for thefollowing year of 1954 was there anyhope that Swiss television wouldstart even a trial service, and it fellto Marcel Bezençon to build thetelevision �bridge� across the Alps toItaly.

For the time being the EBU remainedthe only means for Marcel Bezençonto keep his influence on the waythings were going. A meeting ofthe Administrative Council wasscheduled in Florence for 11 and 12May. In addition, Marcel Bezençonhad already planned a meeting of theTelevision Study Group in which theDutch and Germans were supposedto take part for the first time. Thiswas the ideal opportunity for raisingthe matter in an EBU body. In orderto allow the exchange of news itemsand documentaries to get going morequickly, the Study Group agreed to

make a recommendation rather thanto impose a very rigid standardcontract for programme exchanges.Then there was a discussion of�changes in the general televisionsituation�, on which a report wasmade for the Administrative Council.The Administrative Council wasbriefly informed of the situation andit took four decisions regarding theimprovised network (withoutanybody being sure whether or notit would actually work).

· First, the BBC and RTF were toensure jointly that the installationsfor the network were not takendown after the Coronation, but setup permanently.

· Secondly, all authorities involvedwere to use whatever influencethey had on the appropriateorganizations to push for theestablishment of a Europeannetwork.

Cassel, the first relay point in France




From the EBU�s point of view, orrather that of the study group whosemembers wanted so much to makeit the EBU�s official ProgrammeCommittee, this could only be anattempt at damage limitation. Aninitiative that reflected so much theinterests of the study group, if notthose of the EBU as a whole, hadbeen launched without any formalparticipation of the group. Yet thepeople who had agreed on thearrangements for the Coronationbroadcast at the London meetingwere the same as the members ofthe study group � with the exceptionof its chairman, Marcel Bezençon.

Meanwhile Marcel Bezençonhimself had already made contactwith the Swiss Football Association(ASFA) in order to make the 1954World Cup in Switzerland availablefor television in several countries. Hewas now asked to continue theseefforts on behalf of the EBU. Afterthis, the study group made astatement concerning the�Coordination of InternationalMeetings on Television�. This wastheir plea:

�The Study Group suggested that theAdministrative Council shouldstrongly urge member organizationsnot to take any steps whatsoever toconvene meetings of an internationalcharacter relating to television,without prior reference to theAdministrative Council and,furthermore, to refuse, wheneverpossible, to participate in meetingscalled on other authority duringwhich questions relating to televisionare dealt with, which, in fact, couldand should be discussed within theframework of the Union.�

This would have made a meetinglike the one in London in December1952 illegal, strictly speaking, if theEBU was not advised of itshappening in advance. TheAdministrative Council adoptedexactly this position, and evenextended the obligation to radio. It

The Coronation


27EBU DOSSIERS – 2004/1 27DOSSIERS UER – 2004/1

is possible that some members ordelegates felt attacked by the EBU�sstrict attitude, which carried anundertone of disapproval of theproceedings in the preparations forthe Coronation broadcast.

If the members of the study grouphad hoped to strengthen theirposition by these measures and tobe able to set up the longed-forprogramme committee, they were tobe disappointed as it was agreed topostpone consultations about theestablishment of a programmecommittee until the next meeting ofthe Administrative Council.

On 2 June 1953 the moment hadcome.

The Coronation of Elizabeth II wasthe first event to be broadcast liveinternationally in the full sense ofthe word, and as such it had anundreamt-of fascination for thepublic everywhere, including in allthe countries on the continent thatwere already linked up. Peoplecrowded in front of the few availabletelevision sets and looked for the firsttime through the �window on theworld� in its most agreeable form.

An event which they never thoughtcould be a live audiovisualexperience for them was flickeringacross screens in living rooms, pubsand shop windows. Dozens ofjournalists noted down meticulouslythe number of picture breakdowns,the changes in picture quality andthe clarity of the sound. The fragile,improvised network was shaking,wobbling and trembling, and so wasthe picture on the screens, but it didnot break down.

Television, still seen by many as ahigh-tech toy with no future, hadproved able to transport images liveacross national frontiers. The costof all this was undeniably huge, butthe propaganda effect of this pioneerwork for television was worth itsweight in gold.

In the course of 1953�54, televisionsystems in Belgium and inSwitzerland reached a sufficientstandard for trial transmissions ofprofessional quality. Both countrieswere of particular importancebecause they functioned as bridgesfor the next few internationalactivities in television programming.Belgium was a link between France,Britain, the Netherlands, andGermany; Switzerland betweenFrance, Germany and Italy. AlthoughRAI was also already broadcastingtelevision programmes, Italy had nottaken part in any previous Europeanexchanges. So now there were threenew partners for future exchanges.

Switzerland and Belgium shared allthe problems associated with beinga multilingual country.

In Belgium, the difficulties startedwith the question of which televisionstandard should be adopted. Theoptions were the French 819- or theDutch 625-line system. The specificsituation Belgium was in with its twolarge language groups caused theBrussels Government in 1952 toadopt a position in which the answerto the question of the line standardwas a unique but for Belgium farfrom untypical compromise. French-language television programmeswere to be broadcast in 819 lines;Flemish programmes in 625 lines.Fom late October 1953 there was aregular television service that was asexpensive as it was impractical, withthe side-effect that Belgium becamea real Eldorado for producers oftelevisions that could cope withseveral line standards. Multi-standard televisions were in factneeded only in Belgium, but theywere also sold abroad to someextent, mainly along Belgium�sborders with France andLuxembourg.

In Switzerland, the length ofthe experimental phase shows theinitial resistance and scepticismencountered by television in that



The Eurovision network in 1954country. Édouard Haas started testingin early 1954 and the experimentalstage was completed in 1958. InMarch 1957 there was a referendumon whether the Federal Councilshould be responsible in future alsofor the programme side of television,in both the creative and financialareas. The proposed new article ofthe Constitution on �Radio andTelevision� to this effect wasrejected. The Federal Governmentwas not allowed to interfere withprogramme decisions or to subsidizetelevision.

After the Coronation, the EBUseemed to have learnt its lesson.During the first big Europeanprogramme exchange, it had donelittle more than look on inamazement, while the almostentirely informal cooperation of thetelevision organizations involved hadworked surprisingly well.

The Bezençon Study Group nowworked energetically towards settingup such an institution within theframework of the EBU. At twoconferences in London in July andSeptember 1953, under the directionof the EBU, the experiencessurrounding the Coronation broad-cast were evaluated. It was thendecided to embark on another seriesof international transmissions onlyin the summer of 1954. Thisdecision would furthermore allowenough time to settle the copyrightand performance right questionssurrounding the planned trans-mission, and to agree on how toshare the cost of the necessary lines.Finally, time was needed for essentialtechnical tests of various componentsof the network in order to be reallysure that the transmission would goahead with as few problems aspossible.

Insurmountable difficulties wereturning up constantly, nevertheless,the atmosphere at working meetingswas pioneering.




LONDON

LILLE

STRASBOURGPARIS

M. PEGLIA

TORINO

MILANO

HAMBURG

KÖLN

ROMA

KØBENHAVN

BRUXELLES

HANNOVERWENVOE

KIRK 0' SMOTTS

LOPIK

BERLIN

FELDBERG/T

BADEN-BADEN

M. BEIGUA

M. PENICE

M. SERRA

ZÜRICH




Merger1 January 1993:a new era for Eurovision



With the collapse of the Berlin Walland the rapid changes in EasternEurope, as early as January 1990OIRT was talking in terms of amerger with the EBU during 1993,a process speeded in October 1991when the EBU and OIRT set a datefor the merger: 1 January 1993.

�OIRT�s relations with EBU hadalways been friendly and sustained,especially in the engineering field,�wrote George T. Waters, director ofthe EBU Technical Department(1986�1997) in the Technical Review.

Intervision Eurovision

Most OIRT activities had traditionallybeen pursued in cooperation withthe EBU. The first multilateraltransmission under the Intervisionemblem had in fact been supplied byEurovision on the occasion of the 1960Rome Olympics.

Cooperation between Intervision andEurovision was one of the rareexamples of a genuine collaborativemechanism between Eastern andWestern Europe.

Yet it was a sensitive area: that ofbroadcasting, with news andprogramme exchanges, operationsfor coverage of major sports events,provision of services for Unionmembers and mutual access totransmission networks on the basisof solidarity and reciprocity!

Towards the merger

The principal stage in the marchtowards closer cooperation betweenIntervision and Eurovision datedback to November 1990, when thelatter started to pick up theIntervision News Exchange (IVN-1)daily, live and without pre-recording.The Intervision News Exchange also

became directly accessible to EBUnon-members in Europe viasublicensing agreements.

Another stage reached in late 1991was the inclusion of Eurovision newsitems in IVN-1, through the creationof EVN-W as a step towards theintegration of IVN and EVNexchanges.

As early as 1990 it was decided thatIntervision would retain only twospecialized working groups (TVNews and Sports Programmes).

In the field of news it was alsodecided that the broadcasters of therepublics of the ex-USSR wouldparticipate actively in regularIntervision exchanges, in contrast tothe previous setup where theinternational activities of all USSRbroadcasters were carried on quasi-exclusively by Gostele-radio.



Network integration

From the technical viewpoint the newEBU members from Central and EasternEurope were integrated into mixednetworks using two transponders onEUTELSAT satellites.

It was decided that from 1 January1993, date of the merger, transferof Eurovision operations toEUTELSAT II satellites would be

Albert Scharf (President of the EBU) and A. Vladtrov (President of the OIRT)

followed by digitization of the EBUnetwork, providing eight channels aswell as Euroradio (the EBU radioprogramme exchange) and com-munication links on each transponder.

The EBU, alive to the expectationsof the former OIRT members andto ease their integration into the�club�, had taken a number ofinitiatives, one of which was toguarantee the loan made available


by the European Bank for Re-construction and Development tofinance earth stations linking severalmajor cities of Central and EasternEurope (Prague, Moscow, Bucharest,Budapest, Sofia and Warsaw amongothers) to the Eurovision networkand at the same time connecting upentire regions: an investment ofCHF 10�18 million!

And so it came to pass . . .

The EBU General Assembly in Oslo, July 1992


INTERVISION

With the growth of television in

the late 1950s the countries of

Western Europe, under the EBU

banner, joined forces to exchange

programmes under the name

‘Eurovision’.

Eastern Europe, under the firm

guidance of the OIRT, chose the

name ‘Intervision’. A sort of

“anything you can do, I can do

too” (a typical reaction in East–

West relations at that time), but

above all a technical system of

programme exchanges with the

same ideals as those of the

pioneers.

Intervision’s view was that

promoting the differences and

similarities of the Communist

countries would facilitate

international relations and prevent

television viewers in the East from

being dazzled by other cultures

not really approved by the

Politburo behind the Iron Curtain.

Intervision was thus considered,

according to choice, as “the answer

to Eurovision”, “a means of

developing international

relations”, “a counterblast to the

bright lights of the West” or, again,

a “propaganda tool”.

“The broadcasters of Eastern

Europe operated in a different way

from their counterparts in the

West”, recalls Boris Bergant, Vice-

President of EBU. “It took a certain

time for the ex-members of OIRT

to grasp, for example, the basic

principles of copyright or a licence

fee system, and to solve technical

problems”.

Jean-Bernard Münch, Secretary General of the EBU and his OIRT counterpart Milan Bauman




Jean RéveillonSecretary General

tomoIn an ever-changing world Eurovisionmust remain the leading light, theshining example of the quality of thepublic service.

Our Members, in ever growingnumbers, are right to demand it.

Public service broadcasters want tomove with the times, adopt all thenew forms of programme distri-bution, ensuring by doing so that thecitizens of Europe will not besacrificed to voracious commercialappetites but will keep their accessto the key virtues of pluralism ofinformation and cultural diversity thatare catalysts for social cohesion andmutual understanding.

So, our Eurovision � by providingdaily exchanges of sound andpictures for news and sport, bysupporting the creation ofdocumentaries, youth programmes,fiction and co-productions, byentertaining through major musical,singing and dance events, bypromoting cultural exchanges or thediversity of languages � must seizeevery opportunity to promote thefundamental values that only thepublic service can uphold. Thepublic service obviously remains incontact with market realitiesalthough it does not make them itsonly goal.

Eurovision, a magic word, afew unforgettable bars ofmusic imprinted for ever inour memories, a Europeananthem before its time.

friends Lennart Johansson, thepresident of UEFA, and Lars-ChristerOlsson, the director general, in theoffices of the Swedish FootballFederation. We breakfasted in thetrophy hall and I felt choked byemotion.

Now, as Secretary General of the EBU,the captain of the Eurovision ship, lifereally does hold surprises . . .

How proud it makes me; and what aresponsibility it is! Because, at thegrand age of 50, our Eurovision, withmore life in her than ever at the dawnof the new century, is facing itsdestiny. And it has a name: the digitalage!

And the sub-headings are many: radio,television, Internet, UMTS, broad-band, interactivity, video-on-demand,DAB, electronic programme guides, etc.

When it burst forth, in Berlin on theevening of 30 April, from the brassand strings under the impassionedbaton of Vladimir Ashkenazy, towelcome the new member countriesto the European Union, the melodybrought to mind that as a child . . .

As a child, I would run down the roadin Burbure, my village in the northof France, towards the only house tohave . . . television! I wasn�t the onlyone and we gathered together, theneighbourhood children, leaning onthe windowsill for the flight of fancyto unknown places promised by thosefew bars.

�Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Weare broadcasting from Sweden . . . Youwill be watching the World Cup final...�

Stockholm: I was there just the otherday, with Arne Wessberg, to visit his

And now . . .

© P

hilip

pe Ju

tten

s � E

BU/U

ER



orrow!Demand is strong. It comes fromsocieties that have long been steepedin democracy and that must defendthemselves from attacks on all fronts,but it also comes from the youngernations in which public televisionand radio must still demonstratetheir ability to escape the straight-jacket of State control to don therobes of modern media, open tofreedom of speech and the citizen�svoice . . .

And then there are the troubled areaswhere peace is struggling to settle, orto return. And there too pictures andsound must play an important role inhelping much-awaited calm to reignonce more.

Through its spirit and its web ofinvisible fibres that it spins betweenthe countries of Europe, NorthAfrica and the Middle East, its areaof operation, but also further afieldwith its relays, via its bureausabroad or its sister unions, Euro-vision is at the heart of these majorissues . . .

It is ready to assume its role withall the assurance and expertise thatcomes with the grand age of 50, anage when the plenitude ofexperience joins with the energyand determination that it has neverlost.



Werner RumphorstDirector, EBU Legal and Public Affairs

The leg

The previous Eurovision logo

�Ta taah ta-ta taah ta taaaah ta ta...�Who would not immediatelyrecognize the prelude toCharpentier�s Te Deum, which, forthe last 50 years, has announced toEuropean television audiences thatthey are about to watch, or have justwatched, a Eurovision programme?Rumour has it that the tune waschosen at the time to escape anyobligation to make copyright royaltypayments, since the compositions ofMarc-Antoine Charpentier (1643�1704) are in the public domain, i.e.anybody may use them freely.

Not so any more, however! Thistune, in relation with populartelevision programmes relayed withthe Eurovision logo, has become sowell known over the years as anidentifier of Eurovision programmesthat it was possible to register it as aprotected Community trademark,and this was actually done in 2000,i.e. almost 300 years afterCharpentier�s death. As a result,nobody � other than the activeMembers of the EBU � may use thistune in connection with thebroadcasting of radio and television


programmes, or certain specifiedrelated services, without the expressprior authorization of the EBU.

Similarly, the name Eurovision,together with the EBU logo, isprotected as a trademark (the so-called Eurovision logo).

The logo

Many will remember that theoriginal Eurovision logo, which wasused for over 40 years, was a differentone. It would be for televisionexperts, and especially for brandingspecialists, to explain why thepopular and extremely well knownoriginal logo (a semi-circle of starssurrounding the word Eurovision,with a circle in the middle left freefor each relaying organization toidentify itself) was abandoned in


of the story

Today’s Eurovision logo

gal side50 YEARS OF EUROVISION

favour of the present one, or whythe present logo seems to be usedonly sporadically, and by no meansby all Eurovision Members . . .

What, then, is Eurovision, which iscelebrating its 50th anniversary thisyear?

An ideal place for elucidating thisquestion must be Montreux, whichwas the venue for the spring 2004session of the EBU Legal and PublicAffairs Committee. The firstEurovision transmission consisted oflive coverage of the MontreuxNarcissus Festival, on 6 June 1954.It was relayed simultaneously inBelgium, Denmark, France,Germany, Italy, the Netherlands andthe United Kingdom.

The idea behind Eurovision wasquite simple: each Member

connected to the Eurovision networkwould offer to all the other Membersconnected to the network its owntelevision coverage of events ofpotential interest to at least some ofthe other Members. Once theproduction costs have to be paid inany case, for the purpose of theMember�s own national coverage,why not offer the � alreadyamortized � production free ofcharge to the other Members? Inreturn, the offering Member wouldreceive free offers from the otherMembers, and even though someMembers were bound to offer lessthan others the overall benefits ofsuch an exchange system for everyparticipant were all too obvious.

So obvious, in fact, that it was notuntil 1988 that it was felt desirablefor the EBU Statutes even torecognize the existence ofEurovision. Since then, Article 3§6has defined Eurovision as follows:

�Eurovision� is a television exchangesystem organized and coordinatedby the EBU, based on the under-standing that Members offer to theother Members, on a basis ofreciprocity, their news coverage ofimportant events and their coverageof current affairs and of sports andcultural events taking place in theircountries and of potential interest to

other Members, thereby enablingeach other to provide a high qualityservice in these fields to theirrespective national audiences.

�Eurovision Members� have beendefined as

� active Members, with regard totheir national, regional or localtelevision programme services

� active Members or consortiaconsisting exclusively of activeMembers, with regard to theirtransnational television programmeservices, if admitted in that capacityby the Administrative Council,

which participate on a regular basisin the EBU�s Eurovision exchangesystem, in conformity with theapplicable Eurovision rules laiddown by the Administrative Council.

News, current affairs, sport andcultural events have one feature incommon: either no nationalcommentary is necessary for the localtelevision audience to be able tofollow the live relay of an eventtaking place in another country (e.g.a concert) or, more frequently, theoffering organization�s picturecoverage (p lus internat ionalsound) can be broadcast as itstands, supplemented merely by a




commentary in the relaying organ-ization�s language (especially forsport and news). In contrast,programmes (such as drama) wherethe spoken word plays a decisive roledo not lend themselves to anexchange via Eurovision; they maybe dubbed or subtitled, of course,but normally there is no need for alive or near-live relay in such casesand, in any event, despatch via thetraditional postal service would bemuch cheaper.

As may well be imagined, from thevery outset the EBU�s lawyers playedan active role in laying � and furtherdeveloping over the years � the legalfoundations for the smoothfunctioning of Eurovision. Copyrightand sports rights were the centralconcern of both the EBU LegalCommittee and the EBU LegalDepartment and they remain sotoday.

Sport

In the beginning, the acquisition ofsports rights � which areindispensable for Members� use ofthe coverage (pictures) offered by thehost broadcaster � was a relativelyminor affair. There were virtually nocompetitors outside the EBU, sportwas still very much a matter foramateurs, and the staging of sportsevents was either relatively modestand cheap or, in the case of majorevents such as the Olympics,financed by the State and/or regional/local authorities. Accordingly,contracts were quite simple andbrief, rights were systematicallyacquired for the whole Eurovisionarea, and rights costs at that timeappear quite incredible today: forthe 1954 Football World Cup, theEBU paid the impressive sum ofCHF 10,000. Six years later, for theSummer Olympics in Rome (1960)the EBU paid US$ 667,957. Twentyyears later (Moscow 1980) the pricehad risen to US$ 5,652,500. Another20 years later, however (Sydney2000), the price had sky-rocketed to

US$ 350,000,000. Even when it isacknowledged that, unlike Rome andMoscow, the rights for Sydney alsocovered Central and Eastern Europe(the former Intervision countries),this huge increase within 20 yearslargely speaks for itself. The shiftfrom amateur to professional sportsis not only reflected in the televisionrights fee, however. There has beenparallel inflation in the number ofpages of the contract, given the ever-growing complexity of the relationsbetween sport and television.

Over the years, this development hasrequired more and more internalrule-making on the part of the EBU.Without any attempt atcompleteness, the following maybe recalled in this context:

· model contract for theacquisition of Eurovision rightsto a sports event;

· principles on advertising atvenues for internationallytelevised sports events;

· advertising/sponsorship inEurovision programmes;

· identification of timing and dataservice providers;

· rules on use of the Eurovisionsignal;

· rules on sharing of transmissionrights under Eurovision sportsagreements;

· composition and tasks of a sportssteering committee;

· guarantor groups for the purchaseof sports rights;

· memorandum on virtualadvertising;

· sports rights acquisition rules andprocedures;




· EBU non-Members� access toEurovision sports programmes(sublicensing);

· sublicensing rules relating to theexploitation of Eurovision rightson pay-TV channels;

· rules on former EurovisionMembers� continued access toexisting contracts.

Some of these texts have becomeobsolete, whereas others have beenmodified over the years.

The major rules, applicable today,include the following:

· Sports Rights Acquisition Rulesand Procedures (2002);

· Sharing of Rights Fee byAdministrative Council Decision(2003);

· Rules on Sharing of TransmissionRights Under Eurovision SportsAgreements (2004);

· Sublicensing Rules of EurovisionSports Programmes (2004).

News

From the very beginning of Euro-vision, news played a key role.Jointly, as a group, the Eurovisionmembers � and no-one else � coveredthe whole news and current affairsevents taking place in WesternEurope, on a day-by-day basis.Together with the rapidly expandingEurovision network, this constitutedthe guarantee that Members were ina position to report on events whichtook place the same day in each otherEurovision member�s country.

The television news agencies, whichfor that reason largely abstained fromcovering European news events andconcentrated instead on the othercontinents (with a marked emphasison English-speaking countries), hadno other possibility at that time todeliver their news packages to theEurovision members which subscribedto their services other than to feedtheir material into the Eurovisionnetwork.

More or less parallel to this, acomparable system was developingin Central and Eastern Europe.Organized by the EBU�s sister union,OIRT (with its headquarters inPrague), it operated under the nameIntervision. Reciprocity between theEurovision and Intervision newsexchanges was a normal step for thebroadcasting professionals on eitherside of the Iron Curtain to take. Inpractical terms, this was acceptablesince what was made available to theother side was raw news material(i.e. moving images plus inter-national sound) with every receivingbroadcaster being perfectly free to useit or not to use it and, in particular,to accompany the material, ifbroadcast, with any commentary ofits own choice.

Technically, the Eurovision networkand the Intervision network werelinked via the axis Vienna�Prague.

As may be expected, this inter-connection between the two regionalnetworks also served to carry otherlive pictures, and especially coverageof sports events.

Later, when powerful satellitespermitted news material to betransported on a global scale, theEBU entered into further reciprocity-type arrangements with otherbroadcasting unions, as well as withmajor individual broadcastingorganizations in Asia (NHK) andNorth America (CBS).

From a legal point of view, it was notuntil the early 1990s that the need wasfelt to set up some rules to deal withthe property (copyright) aspect of thenews exchange system and, morespecifically, with the sublicensing ofEurovision news items.

The 1992 Rules on Use of EurovisionNews Material by Members and non-Members thus came into force.They are about to be replaced by acompletely revised and modernizedversion.



The Montreux Narcissus Festival

Cultural programmes

Eurovision started with a culturalprogramme, a live relay of theMontreux Narcissus Festival.

For understandable reasons oflanguage, only programmes in whichthere is no spoken content at all (suchas classical music or ballet) or inwhich understanding the words is notessential for enjoyment (programmessuch as pop concerts) lent themselvesto live relays over the Eurovisionnetwork. Over the years, the numberand type of programmes which werethus exchanged over the network havechanged, largely in parallel with thetendency towards reducing, if notindeed altogether eliminating, liveopera and classical music concerts onMembers� main television channels.

Today, the flagships of Eurovisioncultural programming are the yearlyNew Year�s Concert from Vienna(ORF), the biennial competitions ofYoung Musicians and Young Dancersand, of course, the annual Euro-vision Song Contest (which, by the

way, is in its 48th year). The mostrecent addition is the JuniorEurovision Song Contest, success-fully launched in 2003 and definitelyhere to stay.

From the very beginning, copyrightissues were a central point to bedealt with, whether petits droitsor grands droits, music publishers�rights or the rights of performingartists. In principle, the matter wasquite simple: the offering organ-ization offers its production, i.e.its �signal�, free of charge to allthe relaying organizations, just asin the case of sports and news. Anyadditional rights which need to becleared in the relaying organ-izations� countries are then amatter for the relaying organ-izations to deal with.

In this context, petits droits cause noproblem whatsoever, since the globalcontract which each broadcastingorganization has with its nationalcollecting society automaticallyincludes any broadcasts of Eurovisionprogrammes.

But what about the other categoriesof rightowners? How can theindividual foreign relayingorganizations possibly clear thoserights and, in particular, clear themin sufficient time for the broadcast?

As regards music publishers, astandard contract between the EBUand the IPA (International PublishersAssociation), dating back to the earlyyears of Eurovision, served as a basisfor corresponding national agree-ments between EBU Members andnational publishers� associations.While it continues to play a role inradio, it has become rather obsoletein the context of Eurovision. In anyevent, the principle was that theoffering organization paid the wholeamount due with respect to all thecountries where the programme wasrelayed, with the possibility ofrequesting reimbursement from therelaying organizations.

Grands droits were either cleared bythe offering organization and thenreimbursed by the relaying organ-izations, or cleared direct by the latter

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themselves. Another standardcontract, concluded between the EBUand the international federations ofperformers (musicians, actors, varietyartists) and dating back to the late1950s, resulted in relaying organ-izations� being automatically entitledto broadcast the Eurovision pro-gramme subject to payment of acertain percentage (fixed on a country-by-country basis) of the initial feepaid by the offering organization.

This arrangement too is obsolete.Today, either a Member offers aprogramme and asks individualMembers for a negotiated contri-bution, to cover part of its overall costs(the New Year�s Concert), or thecoproducing organizations agree tocontribute a global amount to the hostbroadcasting organization�s overallcosts (e.g. the Eurovision SongContest).

Apart from these copyright aspects,several other legal issues had to bedealt with, such as the exact usewhich relaying Members may makeof the offering organization�s signaland the conditions for having aEurovision programme sponsored bya relaying organization. Thesematters are dealt with in thefollowing texts:

· Rules on Use of Eurovision Signal(1993);

· Rules on Sponsorship inEurovision Programmes (1987).

Network

If it is true that without programmeswhich lend themselves tosimultaneous relay in other countriesEurovision would not exist, the samecan also be said of the Eurovisionnetwork.

The network, which interlinks theEurovision Members and allows thecirculation of programme materialbetween them, started out with eightnational coordination centres(identical to the eight Members

which participated in the firstEurovision transmission, i.e. RTB/BRT, DR, ARD, RTF (France), RAI,NTS (Netherlands) and the BBC,plus SSR as the host broadcastingorganization). Until ten years ago,central technical coordination of thenetwork was carried out by the EBUTechnical Centre in Brussels, untilits move to Geneva and the setting-up of the Television OperationsDepartment in 1993.

The rapid expansion of theterrestrial network from itsbeginnings in 1954, plus the above-mentioned interconnection with theIntervision network, was followed,from the middle of the 1980sonwards, by the gradualintroduction of a satellite network,which reduced the permanentterrestrial network more and more.The latest development has been theintroduction, in April 2004, of afibre network between majorEuropean cities, as well as aconnection point on the East Coastof the United States, to complementthe existing satellite network.

There are no particular legal rulesapplying to the network, but thereare, of course, operational/procedural codes and, in particular,financial rules and tariffs. However,these are normally outside thelawyers� field of concern.

Eurovision today

Today, the 50th anniversary ofEurovision is a time for celebration.Indeed, the EBU is rightly proud ofthis unique historic achievement, andit is with pride that it will receive theKulturpreisEuropa 2004, on theoccasion of the 50th anniversary ofEurovision, for having �successfullycrossed national frontiers and cultural-historical barriers, in its capacity asan ambassador in the field of culture�.

Today�s figures are indeed impres-sive and promise a bright future, butthe historic achievement of Eurovisionis no less impressive.

In a nutshell

On average, more than 100,000 trans-missions are carried out over theEurovision network per year, usingup to 50 digital satellite channels forthat purpose. The vast majority ofthese are unilateral (point-to-point)transmissions.

As regards content, approximately30,000 news items are made availableto the Eurovision Members everyyear, and together EurovisionMembers broadcast some 50,000hours of sports and cultural pro-grammes offered to them via Euro-vision. It should be noted, though, thata certain percentage of the sportsprogrammes, as well as of theunilateral transmissions, are carriedout on behalf of non-Members.

The potential audience in the entireEurovision area is 640 millionpeople.


Eurovision, whose fifth anni-versary we celebrated on June 6,is something more profound thanan exchange of programmes � oreven the remarkable engineeringtechniques that make it possible.We who work in Eurovision knowthat when we go to a planningconference, or collaborate on aprogramme, we are taking part ina continuing adventure. And welike to think that the programmeswe exchange are links in that chainof understanding between ourcountries which is so vital to ourfuture.

June 6, 1954, marked a major stepforward in the exchange oftelevision programmes amongneighbouring countries, for it wasduring the month which followedthat eight services, namely those ofBelgium, Denmark, France, Italy,the Netherlands, Switzerland,Western Germany and the UnitedKingdom, linked their televisionnetworks in order to shareprogrammes which were originatedat various times in each of thesecountries. It was already a far cryfrom the early 1950s when it wasan adventure to transmit atelevision programme over 200 or300 kilometres. The problem ofconversion of the pictures from onestandard to another had not then

been tackled, and no machineryexisted for coordinating theexchange of programmes. Howgreat a debt do we owe, therefore,to those who had the vision torealise the possibilities, and whoseingenuity enabled them toovercome the immense difficulties� programme, administrative, legaland technical � until today we havea smoothly running machine underthe unifying hand of the EBU.

I feel, too, that this is the time toremember those earlier days,beginning with the first cross-Channel television in 1950. Whilemuch of that early spadework wasdone by RTF and the BBC, it is wellto remember the credit that mustalso go to those other services,particularly in the smaller countries,who started actively to participatein Eurovision, with all its demandson their programme and technicalstaffs, at the very moment whenthey were bearing the stresses andstrains of getting their own domesticservices going. And we remembertoo with gratitude the debt that webroadcasters owe to the postalauthorities in providing andoperating vision links for us and inhelping us to solve the manyproblems which have arisen inconnection with sound, vision andcommunication circuits.

Eurovision is no longer a noveltyin the television programmes of thecountries of Western Europe. I lookforward with pleasure to the day �not, I feel sure, far distant � whenit will be regarded as a normal andindispensable element of all thetelevision networks in WesternEurope and even further afield.

42

5 years




Sir Ian Jacob




Of course, certain questions immedi-ately arose. Would it be possible toobtain from a great number oforganizations such regular andcontinuous cooperation? Would thecosts not be too high? Would not thisand would not that? But on the otherhand, the advantages were soobvious. There was a Eurovisionnetwork that in the quickestconceivable way could transfer visualnews from one European country toalmost any other. The fastest jet planehad the speed of a snail in com-parison.

A conference of chief editors of thenews services of many televisionorganizations, which was held on 10and 11 March 1958 in Amsterdam,came to the conclusion that theEurovision network offered greatpossibilities for such newstransmissions, especially when veryimportant last-minute items wereinvolved. The conference advised theProgramme Committee and theTechnical Committee to form astudy group, which would also havethe task of experimenting with thedaily exchange of news. TheProgramme Committee and theTechnical Committee accepted thisproposal and appointed a studygroup with myself as chairman. MrJ.T. Dickinson and Mr H. Maaswere appointed secretaries. During

10 yearsIn the autumn of 1957 theProgramme Committee ofthe EBU decided toinvestigate, together with theTechnical Committee, thepossibility of using theEurovision network for theexchange of news items.

44

J.W. RengelinkChairman of the EBU News StudyGroup; Programme Commissioner,Nederlandse Televisie Stichting




the preparatory work of this studygroup it turned out that, for financialreasons in particular, a number oforganizations could not cooperate inan experiment.

Nevertheless, during the period from6 to 11 October 1958 and from 20to 25 of the same month, twoexperiments took place in which theBritish Broadcasting Corporation(BBC), Radiotelevisione Italiana(RAI), Radiodiffusion-TélévisionFrançaise (RTF), Belgische Radio enTelevisie/Radiodiffusion-TélévisionBelge (BRT/RTB) and the Neder-landse Televisie Stichting (NTS)took part, while during the secondweek the Independent TelevisionNews (United Kingdom) joined aswell. During this experimentalperiod, material from some newsagencies was also broadcast via theEurovision network; this materialwas available to all participants freeof cost, apart from the questionwhether they were or were notsubscribers to these agencies. Theexperiments proved that the systemcould work and also that it wasuseful. This was particularlyapparent during the first period, inwhich the death of His HolinessPope Pius XII occurred. Never beforehad news about such an event, asdistressing as it was important, beenspread so quickly. Not only Europe

benefited by the rapidity in dissemin-ating the news: the Americantelevision stations received the newsvia the Eurovision network toLondon, from where it was broughtover to the United States by plane.

The results of these experimentswere discussed at a meeting in Romein December 1958. It was theunanimous opinion at this meetingthat the experiments had proved thatthe Eurovision connection could bevaluable for a fast news transmission,and it was decided, among otherthings:

· that during a second experimentalperiod even more experiencewould be gained;

· that more organizations would beinvited to participate.

This second experimental series tookplace from 4 to 30 May 1959.During a part of this period theArbeitsgemeinschaft der Offentlich-Rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten derBundesrepublik Deutschland (ARD),Sveriges Radio (SRT), Société Suissede Radiodiffusion et Télévision(SSR) and Danmarks Radio (DSR),also participated in the experiment.Again the results were verysatisfactory. At a meeting in Brusselsin the following month a daily news

exchange was proposed, in which asmany organizations as possible couldparticipate, and which should beginas soon as possible. However, for allkinds of technical and particularlyfor financial reasons, it took sometime before the news transmissionscould take place regularly and beforethey became quantitatively signifi-cant. Because of the technical andfinancial circumstances referred to,only the BBC, the RAI, the RTF, theBRT/RTB and the NTS participatedat the outset. But in effect since1 January 1962 the news exchange,which takes place nearly every day,has become a smoothly runningEurovision instrument, in whichmany European television organ-izations participate. Indeed, at thosetimes when events of importancetake place in any European country,the Eurovision news transmissionsare indispensable. Thus, Eurovisioncontributes towards bringing thenews to television screens in thefastest possible way, news that tensof millions of people eagerly lookforward to.

In 1962, 1,106 news items weredistributed via the Eurovisionnetwork. Each of these was used byabout five organizations on average.During 1963 a total of 1,246 itemswas made available. These werebroadcast by an average of six

J.T. Dickinson, chief engineeer of the EBU Technical Centre from 1950 to 1972



organizations. The news trans-mission has become an example ofpractical European cooperation ofgreat significance. Nearly every daythe television news services of Europeconfer about the most importantevents, and the subjects that eachwould like to broadcast or to receiveare deliberated. Nearly every day thenews coordinator (appointed in turnby the participating organizations),the Eurovision coordinator inGeneva, and the staff of the TechnicalCentre in Brussels take care that whenat five o�clock in the afternoon visualnews appears on the network,everything has been well preparedso that the programme is conductedas fast and as efficiently as possible.The European news transmission hasbecome an important function whichwe can no longer imagine not beingpart of the activities of the EBU.

New developments are going on. Theuse of satellites for the transmissionof news from America to Europe,and vice versa, can open up evengreater possibilities in connection

with the Eurovision news exchange.News, for instance from Berlin, sentto one of the European satellitetransmitters, relayed by satellite toan American receiving station andfrom there to the American tele-vision organizations, reaches itsdestination speedily. Many similarexamples can be given in all kindsof combinations and directions. Thepossible linking of the Eurovisionnetwork to an east European systemcould stimulate the news exchangebetween west and east Europe. Itgoes without saying, that in such acase special attention would have tobe given to norms of freedom andindependence. But�luckily!�theworld is on the move.

News and actualities form a thrillingpart of television programmes, andthe regular news bulletins probablyhave the highest viewing density. Thefinancial resources that are availablefor news-gathering are enormous. Itseems to me that a bigger share ofthese resources should be used forfurther improvement of news

distribution via the Eurovisionnetwork. More frequent broad-casts, more subjects, the openingof the network to the newsagencies, these are some of therequirements, in my view at least.I am convinced that the time is notfar off when a permanentlyavailable Eurovision network willopen up even greater possibilitiesfor the rapid dissemination ofnews. Close cooperation with thegreat international news agenciesand especially technical links withother parts of the world will makepossible, as it always has, fasterdistribution of news.

The News Study Group of theProgramme Committee, consistingof representatives of many newsservices of members and associatemembers of the EBU, has, in myopinion, through the excellentcooperation with the TechnicalCentre in Brussels and theAdministrative Office in Geneva aswell, done much good work. Yet weare still only at the beginning.

46

Telstar




J.W. Rengelink




20 yearsThe news of the assassination ofPierre Laporte, a Quebec cabinetminister, suddenly broke on to theworld scene on 17 October 1970.Eurovision � Europe�s non-profitinternational television exchange �at once tried to obtain pictures, buttechnical difficulties stopped thesimple direct transmission betweenEurope and Montreal.

An elaborate coordination chain wasimmediately set up by telex fromEurovision�s Brussels TechnicalCentre to Geneva, from Geneva toNew York and New York toMontreal. After four hours� intenseeffort by Eurovision, an exquisitelycomplicated hook-up was establishedvia New York � and Europeantelevision viewers were able to seethe pictures at exactly the same timeas an appalled public in Canada andthe United States.

This was quite an accomplishmentfor an organization that has onlyabout twice as many employees (220)as it has active and associatemembers (103), owns no televisionstudios of its own, and operates onan extremely limited budget. Few ofthe millions of European viewersrealize that every day some ten itemson their TV screen � news, sports,documentaries and entertainmentprogrammes � are brought to them

Stanley Englebardt

Millions of people in Europecan sit at home and look atprogrammes that come fromall around the world. This ishow it is made possible.

Henrik Hahr




by Eurovision. Nor do they knowhow these pictures from distantcountries reach them.

It all began in 1950 when theEuropean Broadcasting Union (EBU)was formed by 23 Western Europeanand Mediterranean area nations, toexchange information and experi-ence in technical and legal matters.Television was little more than atechnical curiosity then, and thecountries that did broadcasttelevision all used different systemsof sending and receiving pictures.The British system, for example,transmitted a picture made up of 405horizontal lines of electron-beamdots, while the French system used819 lines.

Tuned-in Europe. This was resolvedin 1952 by one of the least heralded,but most significant, technicalbreakthroughs in the history of TV.Developed jointly by British andFrench engineers, it consisted of aconverter, an intricately wired �blackbox� at the BBC facilities in London,which could adjust lines no matterhow many came in and how manywere needed to go out. This was thekey that unlocked the TV age forEurope.

In 1953, after the success of livetelevision coverage of the Queen�s

coronation, the EBU decided tobroaden its scope by includingprogramme exchanges. One yearlater, eight nations � Belgium,Denmark, Federal Germany, France,Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerlandand the United Kingdom � arrangedto swop 18 different live pro-grammes, and the post and telecom-munications authorities in each ofthese countries also agreed toprovide the necessary links. Specialtelevision sections were set up withinthe framework of the EuropeanBroadcasting Union. It was named�Eurovision�, and a star-burstintroductory motif was designed,backed by a stately Te Deumsignature tune. (Today it is used onlyfor special feature programmes.)

Try to get a firm grasp on Eurovision,however, and you�re likely to end upwith a fistful of air. The 28European, Mediterranean and USnetworks which operate TV services,and may participate in the dailyexchange of programmes, are boundby no permanent agreement. TheEBU has no owned circuits, notelevision cameras, no productionunits. It hasn�t even one superstarunder full-time contract. What is itthen? �A programme and news co-ordination point between all theEuropean national networks,� saysthe EBU�s Secretary General Henrik

Hahr. �In other words, a TVprogramme clearing house.�

Perhaps this is seen most clearly inthe daily exchanges of news, whenmost current events are �offered� and�bid for� during a unique newsconference. One morning recently,I sat in on one of these sessions.

Foreign Exchange. The setting wasa small studio at Eurovision�sGeneva headquarters. I was told thatat over a score of similar studios inas many countries, including Britain,the TV news editors of Europeannetworks, plus those several newsfilm services and American CBS,NBC and ABC chains, were sittingdown at their microphones. Thefocal point of the voice conference,however, was the room in which Iwas standing, where a Eurovisionteam of four was getting ready to actas �broker� for the daily newsexchange.

On cue at 11 o�clock, editors beganchecking in, using either English orFrench, the working languages ofEurovision. The news coordinator,chosen on rota from among thenetwork editors, asked the Euro-vision coordinator what he had tooffer. �We have several interestingitems this morning,� the latterreplied. Then he described the news

49

Behind the screen of Eurovision




events that had been reported to himvia teletype, telephone and radio fromseveral associate members �television networks outside Europewhich cooperate in the exchange ofitems. The films ranged from anairline crash in Japan to a politicaldemonstration in South Africa.

Current Affairs. Other offerings, allof them professionally succinct,came from members on the circuit.The BBC had film of a State Visit;France had dramatic shots of amountain disaster; and from Austriathere were half a dozen items whichhad been filmed by Intervision, thecommunist bloc�s equivalent ofEurovision. At the end of eachdescription, the Eurovision co-ordinator asked, �Any interest?� Itrequires two or more acceptances foran item to be scheduled on theevening news-swopping session.Then after only 25 minutes � duringwhich 28 news items were offered,15 accepted and 13 rejected � thecoordinator ended the conferencewith a polite, �Thank you and goodmorning.�

For the actual news swopping, I flewto Brussels where the EBU ControlCentre is located under the dome ofthe Palais de Justice, the highest pointin the city. This is the nerve centreof the operation where antennae onthe dome and a formidable array ofelectronic equipment under it areused to receive the programmesbeamed to Brussels and to distributethem to Eurovision membernetworks.

By the time I arrived, the day�s newsexchange schedule had been set andthe distribution routes planned. In adimly lit control room, eighttechnicians at three consoles werenow checking the quality of thevarious circuits that would beneeded for the swop. Where theatmosphere in Geneva that morninghad been relaxed, almost club-like,the air here crackled with tension asthe technicians tested different routes

to clear the image from Rome. Then,on cue from the director, the eveningnews exchange began with a by nowsharp and clear view of a late-breaking story from Italy�s network.

That morning an Italian crew hadcovered a vicious storm which rakedtheir Mediterranean coast, damaginghomes and driving a huge tankeraground on rocks. Now, via radiorelays, the story was being transmit-ted from Rome to Brussels, whereswitching equipment was sending itout again simultaneously to the eightEBU members that had requested theitem. The recipients were recordingthe film on videotape for theirevening news broadcasts. Back-ground sound of the howling stormwas being supplied, but localannouncers would fill in thecommentary in their native language,based on information sent fromEurovision by teletype.

Who pays for all this? �One of themost remarkable things aboutEurovision,� says Henrik Hahr, �isthe distribution of costs. By pro-rating the expenses, even the smallestnations can receive programmes thatoriginated half way round the world.The formula for this pro-ratingassigns each member a certainnumber of units based on the totalnumber of TV sets in that country.These units are then used tocalculate, how much a network mustpay for participating in a programmeor news item.�

For example, during the 1972Olympics, Germany offeredextended coverage of the Games inMunich � a package of programmesthat was accepted by virtually everyactive member and a large numberof associates. There was no chargeby the German TV consortium forthe cameras, crews and localfacilities involved; Eurovisionoperates on the principle that afavour done by one member todaywill be reciprocated by anothermember tomorrow. The Eurovision

Palais de Justice in Brussels



vision network in communicationshistory.

The starting point was on the moon,whence pictures were transmittedacross 250,000 miles of space toAustralia. From there, an earthstation beamed the image to thePacific satellite which, in turn, sentit back down to Jamesburg,California. At Jamesburg, it was putinto a microwave relay system whichsped it half-way across the UnitedStates to Houston Mission Control.In Houston, NASA fed the image tothe networks.

At that point, a technician in theEurovision caravan there flipped aswitch on the console, which sentthe pictures over land lines to NewYork, and by satellite to Tokyo forrelay by cable to the Yamaguchi earthstation of the Indian Ocean satellite.Then, in a split second, it went onto Goonhilly Downs, Cornwall; viacable to the BBC converter inLondon; by other cables to theEurovision Control Centre inBrussels; and finally to some twodozen Eurovision members inEurope and North Africa and,through Intervision, to seven EasternEurope countries. On the day beforethe shot, the Atlantic Intelsat IIsatellite became available and, tosafeguard this moment in history, itwas booked as well.

�We broke several records along theway,� explains Richard Francis. �Atransmission record of over 400,000miles; a time lag of about 2.2 secondsbetween capturing the images on themoon and displaying them onEuropean home screens; the use ofthree different communicationssatellites for a single broadcast. Soonwe may have a European satellitewhich will eliminate the need for anyland cables. We�ll just beam theprogrammes up there, and individualstations can take them off if they like.�

But even without the new satel-lite, Eurovision today is firmly

cost of cable and satellite trans-mission of the Games, however, waspro-rated, so that Britain, forexample, which has one of thegreatest numbers of television setsin Europe, had a bill more than 37times larger than Tunisia for thesame programme. Yet, large or small,all Eurovision members would havereceived the Olympic Games at aprice they could afford.

Popular Records. In Britain, enter-tainment shows such as TheEurovision Song Contest and JeuxSans Frontières (It�s a Knockout)attract the largest Europeanaudiences. Next in line are sportsevents like the European Cup Final.But it�s the one-shot specials, suchas the Apollo XI coverage, whichbreak records � even when thingsdon�t go as planned.

Months before the first historicmoon walk of 20 July 1969,Eurovision began making plans topick up the pictures offered byAmerica�s National Aeronautics andSpace Administration. Programmersreserved land lines and satellite timeneeded to relay the pictures acrossthe Atlantic Ocean. Then, less thana week before the final countdown,the Intelsat III F2 satellite suddenlywent dead. In an all-day meeting atthe ABC studios in New York,Eurovision�s on-the-spot experts, andthe US broadcasters who had plannedto use the satellite to record theworld�s response to the moonshot,covered the floor and walls withmaps of the world showing allavailable communications links. �Ifwe can�t go the short way,� saidRichard Francis, head of the EBUApollo XI project, �then we�ll takethe long route � the other way roundthe world.�

When British viewers tuned in onJuly 20 and 21, the only differencebetween theirs and the USreception was about half a second�stime delay � a lag caused by thelongest and most unusual tele-



established as one of man�s mostuseful and pleasurable technologicaltools. More, it is a formidableenforcer of what Jean d�Arcy, formerdirector of Radio and Visual Servicesat the United Nations, calls: �Theright of man to communicate.�


25 yearsTriumphal MarchEmmanuel Belser




What does an international exchangeof television programmes andbaroque music have in common?Such a question is enough to fox eventhe best candidates of a TV or radioquiz show. Yet any schoolboy canwhistle the Eurovision theme tune.These catchy few bars are borrowedfrom the prelude, entitled �TriumphalMarch�, from the Te Deum by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1636�1704). Itgoes without saying that this musicsounds better beneath the vaults of abaroque church than at theinternational football matches forwhich it regularly serves as anopening theme tune. But the fathersof Eurovision were entitled to acertain euphoria when you think ofthe difficulties they had to overcomebefore bringing their new-born childto be baptized. Just over four yearsbefore that an international exchangeof TV programmes was still facedwith major political, technical andlegal obstacles. There was at the timethe old International BroadcastingUnion (IBU), that dated from beforeWorld War I I and which hadal located radio channels andsucces s fu l ly promoted theinternational exchange of radioprogrammes. During the war it wasstruck with total paralysis then afterthe war it sank into a deep identitycrisis as certain member countries,and first and foremost the Soviet

Union, tried to claim a dominantposition that was unacceptable to theother European radio organizations.On the initiative of the BBC inLondon, a new umbrella organ-ization was finally set up in Torquayon 12 February 1950: the EuropeanBroadcasting Union (EBU). Itsordinary members were broadcastingcorporations in 21 Europeancountries, joined by extraordinarymembers in Australia, Japan andSouth Africa. The countries in theEastern Bloc did not adhere to it.Thus was created a body that intheory appeared able to organize andadminister TV programmeexchanges. And yet it met withcountless difficulties. For example,the major facilities needed formultinational programme trans-missions were still totally missing.In addition to national networks, atleast five more new transmitterswere needed along with 80 relaystations to guarantee the programmetransmission axes from north tosouth and east to west becausedecimetric television waves onlytravel from transmitter to receiverin a direct, unobstructed line. Thedifferent picture standards used bythe national television networkswere another major difficulty: Britainused screens with 405 lines, France819 lines and the other Europeancountries 625, when they actually

had television. The legal andfinancial problems were no lessserious: it was necessary to find aformula that was able to satisfy thecopyright requirements of theparticipants and share out the costsin accordance with each corpor-ation�s financial situation.

Until the actual launch of Eurovisionin time for the European TelevisionWeeks, the issue had still not beensolved: at the last minute somecountries had to withdraw theircontributions to the event owing tothe failure of negotiations with theperformers� unions. Among others,the British cabaret show CaféContinental and the Danishprogramme Tivoli, which was to bebroadcast from the eponymousfairground, had to be cancelled.Denmark nevertheless found areplacement programme, Rendez-vous in Copenhagen, featuring suchstars as groups in traditional dress,folk dancers and an exhibition offarm animals.

Even the customs regulations at thetime were a barrier to internationalunderstanding by the intermediary oftelevision. A Swiss newspaper of thetime told the following story: �Whenthe French wanted to set up theirrelay stations on the English side ofthe Channel to transmit the English




programmes the British customsdemanded £7,000 in customs dutiesfor �imported� equipment. Withoutfurther ado, the French customsseized the British equipment that wasabout to be installed on the oppositeside of the Channel near Boulogne,and placed judicial seals on itdemanding the payment of FF7 million.The irritated intervention of theBritish parliament and a decree fromthe Cabinet were needed before theFrench, then English, equipmentwere released from sequestration.�

Let us look back over the first fivepost-war years, when the variouscountries were striving to reconstructand there was still very little sign ofa trend towards cross-bordercooperation. Back in July 1947 theSwiss Marcel Bezençon, a man ofradio and the future director generalof the Swiss Broadcasting Corpor-ation (SSR), wrote to UNESCO topresent his �Plan to set up aninternational newscast and televisionprogramme service�. A year later hesubmitted to the dying IBU the ideafor a �television programme stockexchange�. Quite understandably,this initiative did not stir up anyenthusiasm either. The foundation ofthe dynamic EBU in 1950 held greaterpromise. The EBU immediatelydecided to set up a Legal Committeeto look into the complex issues ofintellectual property. Shortlyafterwards, Marcel Bezençon wasappointed director general of theSSR, which allowed him, as thedelegate of a member organization,to present his programme exchangeproject with greater authority. Withuntiring perseverance MarcelBezençon � with the active supportof his colleague Théo Fleischmann� reiterated his requests that thisinternational forum should adopt hisproject of TV programme exchangesuntil it eventually agreed to discussthe subject, initially more out ofpoliteness than out of any realinterest. A working group was thenset up under his chairmanship thatstrove to draw up, from practically

nothing, lists of problems, solutionsand studies, all of which formed aremarkably solid base right up to thecompletion of the project. Thesuccess of the productions by themajor television corporations of thetime, in Britain and France, providedwelcome support to the idea ofprogramme exchanges. On 27August 1950 the BBC organized thefirst international programmeexchange in celebration of the 100thanniversary of the first cable beinglaid between England and France.The programmes were transmittedfrom Calais to London, relayed viaDover. For technical reasons, the linkcould only be made with Britishequipment and only in one direction.And that prompted the two countriesto start building image converters.Barely two years later the goal hadbeen achieved. The first officialprogramme exchange both waysbetween London and Paris was madesuccessfully during the �Week ofFrench and British Television� from8 to 16 July 1952. Prior to the actualsetting-up of Eurovision thetransmission, to the continent, of thecrowning of Queen Elizabeth II wasundoubtedly a high point in the earlydays of international television.Britain, France, the Netherlands andWest Germany � ARD had joined theEBU shortly before � formed on thatoccasion a provisional chain ofterrestrial relay stations. In themeantime, within the EBU theworking group had made enormousprogress in planning the exchanges.On the group�s initiative, the EBUAdministrative Council asked itsmembers to �urgently discuss withthe competent authorities in theirrespective countries the possibilityof setting up without delay apermanent network for the recipro-cal relay of programmes�. Aplanning subgroup, chaired byÉdouard Haas � the then director ofthe television service in Zurich andnow the head of programming atSSR headquarters � suggested thatthe programmes planned for the endof 1953 be deferred to June 1954

27 August 1950

At 9.30 pm on 27 August 1950

the television announcer at

Alexandra Palace was able to say:

“On August 28th 1850 the first

telegram was sent from England to

France by means of a cable laid

across the Straights of Dover.

Tonight – in a very few minutes –

television pictures transmitted to

Alexandra Palace from one of our

mobile outside broadcast units at

this moment in Calais will not only

mark the centenary of that historic

achievement of the last century,

but herald in a new and important

era in international

communication”.



when they could be turned into�Television Weeks� to allow enoughtime for all European TV corpor-ations to take part. These �TelevisionWeeks� would then coincide with theWorld Football Championship whichwas to be held in Switzerland. Therewas the promise of a marvellouspropaganda coup for the smallscreen. In November 1953 the EBUGeneral Assembly meeting inMonte-Carlo decided to set up aprogramme committee, whose job itwould be to specify the key issues inthis sector then submit proposals tothe Administrative Council about theEBU�s general programme policy.

By June 1954 everything was inplace.

The signature tune was heard forthe first time, in appropriatecelebration of the first Eurovisionexchange. Eight European countrieswere linked by terrestrial transmit-ters for the European TelevisionWeeks and they delivered theircontributions one after the other.Switzerland had the honour ofopening the exchange with theNarcissus Festival in Montreux.Thanks to technical assistancefrom Germany and Italy, the SwissBroadcasting Corporation, whichwas still in its infancy back then,was able to transmit the WorldFootbal l Championship fromBern.

It is true to say that sports eventsstill occupy today as important aplace in programme exchanges asthey did then. But people are oftenunaware that the Eurovision newsexchange currently supplies morethan half of the volume of pro-grammes exchanged. The Eurovisionnews exchange not only sends outthe latest news in sound and picturesthree times a day to the Europeantelevision organizations that take partbut it has also become a veritablehub of news exchanges throughoutthe world. Initially there was just thesatellite link between Europe and the



USA. But since 1970 the EBU hashad a coordination bureau in NewYork that sorts the news itemscoming from the major US televisioncompanies and the various newsagencies before transmitting them tothe EBU headquarters in Geneva. Inthe east Eurovision is connected toIntervision, which was founded inthe early 1960s to similarly link theEastern Bloc television corporations.The coordination centre for thatinstitution is in Prague. Via Inter-

vision, a direct satellite link is madewith the Far East. In South Americaa similar system with a coordinationcentre is currently being set up,which will improve the flow of newsitems both within the continent andfrom it to the rest of the world. Wecan quite rightly say that Eurovisiondeveloped in leaps and bounds. Theeight national television corporationswith about 10 million potentialviewers during the Television Weeksback in 1954 have spread into a

network of 33 national corporationsreaching a total audience of 300million people: 100 million viewersin Europe; 200 million connected tothe television networks of NorthAfrica and the Middle East thattransmit Eurovision.

It is a moot point whether Euro-vision actually played or might playan important role in efforts to unifyEurope. Sports competitions andsimilar events would appear to



favour nationalism. Programmeshave been broadcast about a working-class family in Sweden and in othercountries in a bid to bring Europeanstogether: the lack of interest waspitiful, yet perhaps we weredisheartened too quickly. However,�Eurovision� does not imply theexpression of a community ofdifferent views from a united Europebut is merely a hybrid of the words�Europe� and �television� created bythe British journalist George

Campey. Neither the EBU nor itssubsidiary Eurovision can force themember organizations to accept whatdoesn�t suit them. The freedom todecide is safeguarded for each ofthem. And yet the choice ofprogrammes on the elections to theCouncil of Europe may just createnew opportunities for this.

Although Eurovision has thrived tothe point of being, as has been said,the European institution that works

the best, this is not so much due to aconstant unity of views as to the willof members, the authorities in eachindividual country and the telecomcompanies, in particular in Swit-zerland that did their utmost toensure the smooth running of theTransalpine link at the right timeand without a hitch.

Given the results, a few bars ofCharpentier�s �Triumphal March�would appear to be quite justified.



Improvised link-ups

1950: On 27 August, the BBC madea TV broadcast across the Channelfrom Calais using its own equip-ment.

1952: Between 8 and 14 July, testswere carried out by the BBC and thethen RTF with a view to setting up aTV relay between Paris and London.

1953: On 2 June, the Coronation ofQueen Elizabeth II, broadcast in theUnited Kingdom, was transmittedlive to France, Belgium, theNetherlands and West Germany.This was a one-day technicalachievement which created animmense interest amongst thepublic. A start had been made andthe germ of Eurovision was sown.

1953: There was a rapid expansionof television in European countrieswhere it already existed, and in manyother countries it was beginning toget underway. The individualtelevision services could not exist inisolation: there was a need toorganize international programmeexchanges so that TV could trulybecome a �window on the world�.The EBU took up the problem: itsTechnical Committee began studieson the technical development ofinternational television links. A study

30 yearsEBU Press Release,31 May 1984.On 6 June 1954, television audi-ences of eight European countrieswere able to watch live coverage ofthe Narcissus Festival from Mon-treux in Switzerland, and an addressfrom Pope Pius XII at the Vatican. Itwas the beginning of a greatadventure: that of Eurovision. Sincethat date, the now famous Eurovisionstar-burst emblem, accompanied bythe soaring triumphal notes from theTe Deum of Marc-Antoine Charpen-tier has become familiar to millionsof people throughout Europe andelsewhere. As Eurovision enters its31st year on 6 June 1984, people areno longer amazed at seeing picturesof events coming to them live fromfar away countries, even from theMoon, and being able to participateindirectly in the world�s greatmoments, whether happy or tragic,or even just distracting.

The idea for these internationalexchanges of television programmes,this programme �stock exchange�,had long been in the minds of certainpeople who were aware of theextraordinary possibilities of com-munication offered by the still

embryonic medium, and thecomplex problems � legal, financialand technical � that this new methodof broadcasting would raise wereforeseen by those who understoodthe prodigious development that wasin store for it. As far back as 1947,the late Marcel Bezençon, thendirector of Radio Lausanne inSwitzerland, had submitted ascheme to UNESCO for a �tele-vision programme exchange�. Thecreation of the European Broad-casting Union (EBU) in 1950 wasto provide the instrument forestablishing this.

The EBU, �a professional associationof broadcasting organizations whichaims to promote cooperationbetween its members and withbroadcasting organizations world-wide� was the natural support forthe Eurovision it created. It hasforged over the years a mechanismwhich has opened the way to vastmultilateral transmissions in Europeand between continents.

This was the pre-history of Euro-vision.



The Control Centre, located in the tower of the BRT/RTBF

© R

. Mar

tin

(Bru

x.)group on programmes (Television 53)

felt that there would be considerableinterest in seeing the provisionalrelay installations becomepermanent.

1954: The technical and programmeexperts of some EBU Membersorganized a �1954 TV SummerSeason� in which eight televisionservices could participate (Belgium,Denmark, Federal Germany, France,Italy, the Netherlands, the UnitedKingdom and Switzerland). ThisSeason, known as the �LilleExperiment� (it was in this city thatthe original coordination centre waslocated) began on 6 June 1954 withcoverage of the Narcissus Festival andan outside broadcast from theVatican and continued for a wholemonth with the transmission of theprincipal matches of the WorldFootball Championship and eightprogrammes of a national character.

A network

What was only an experiment in June1954 has become over the past 30years a stable institution with anefficient terrestrial network, withworldwide ramification by satelliteand the application of newtechnologies.

EBU member organizations wereinvolved in the task of expandingEurovision by contributing to thespecialized working parties in orderto solve problems of many kindsraised by the preparation andsupervision of TV programmes.

There were urgent problems of atechnical nature to be dealt with intwo essential stages. Firstly, there wasthe organization and putting intooperation in January 1956 of theInternational Eurovision ControlCentre (EVC).

Brussels, home of the EBU TechnicalCentre, then occupied a strategic com-munications position between theembryonic television services of Europe.

The Control Centre, locatedoriginally in the dome of the Palaisde Justice, is now housed in the newbroadcasting centre of Belgian radioand television (BRT/RTBF). As thenerve centre of Eurovision, the roleof the EVC is to supervise and switchprogrammes from various origins.

At the same time, a PermanentEurovision Network was set up. Thisconsisted of the leasing of the soundand vision circuits necessary for inter-national transmissions. The EBUbegan the first stage in 1962 by thepermanent leasing, for the commonuse of EBU members participatingin Eurovision, of the most frequentlyused sound circuits and thecorresponding control circuits. Asfrom 1 January 1968, Eurovision hasused its own Vision Circuit Networkwhich increases in size each year withthe addition of further circuits.

Proper maintenance had to beorganized to ensure the quality of allthese circuits; the vision circuits hadto be adapted to colour andtranscoders and standards convertershad to be created. And to make theexchanges flow as smoothly aspossible, operating rules had to bedrawn up.



The multiplicity of the transmissionsand the need to process them asquickly as possible, sometimes evenimmediately, led to the organizationof a system of computerized remoteswitching of various sections of thePermanent Network.

Here are some significant figures: inthe first year of Eurovision there wasan average of one transmission perweek. In 1983, the average numberof programmes originated was threea day. In 1954, Eurovision reachedonly eight Western Europeancountries. In 1984, 34 televisionservices from 27 European andMediterranean Basin countries arelinked to Eurovision by terrestrial orsatellite circuits. This vast networkserves over 123 million receivers,representing an audience of some370 million viewers. The Networkis also linked to Intervision (thenetwork of the Socialist Bloccountries) and to a great number ofservices outside the EuropeanBroadcasting Area. In 1984, thelength of the Eurovision PermanentVision Network is 17,500km andthere are over 60 injection points.

Unceasingly, the Technical Centrethrough the EBU�s technicalworking parties, is improving theNetwork, extending it and perfectingthe transmission techniques so thatthe whole world can be presentedto viewers.

Operation

While the technique was beingdeveloped, legal problems were dealtwith and financial rules wereestablished. Eurovision began withthe development of programmes ona European basis but this has nowbeen extended worldwide. Theadministrative coordination of theexchanges is the responsibility of theTelevision Programme Departmentof the EBU through its EurovisionProgramme Division and News andSpecial Operations Division. A verythorough organization has been built

up to collect and distribute allinformation on programmes or newssubjects offered by memberorganizations to be injected into theEurovision Network, to establishprecise timetables, to determinecommentators� positions at the pointof origin when necessary, and tosettle financial questions.

Programmes

Exchanges of sports programmes areof great importance: major eventslike the Olympic Games � the firstto be covered being the WinterOlympic Games from Cortinad�Ampezzo in Italy in January 1956.All Winter and Summer OlympicGames have been transmitted sincethen and in Summer 1984, viewerswill see the Olympics from LosAngeles in the United States.Another major event seen regularlyon Eurovision is the World FootballChampionship, the last being heldin Spain in 1982.

A firm favourite with viewers is theannual Eurovision Song Contest,relayed for the first time in 1956 by10 countries and seen in 1984 (5 May)by 27 countries.

On 25 June 1967 a landmark inEurovision�s development was atransmission using the entiregeostationary satellite network ofIntelsat for the programme OurWorld and this was repeated on alarger scale in 1971 with theprogramme Children of the World.Other types of programmes seenthrough Eurovision includeconcerts, variety shows, ballet, andopera, etc.

News Exchanges

EBU member organizations, awarethat one of their most importanttasks was to inform the public onthe main events taking place in theworld � a public more and more avidto know and participate in the lifeof its time, very soon concerned




themselves with a regular exchangeof television news.

The creation of the EurovisionNetwork was a rapid vehicle for thetransmission of television news fromone country to another. FromOctober 1958 to May 1959,experimental exchanges were set upbetween five organizations andcontinued on a regular basis fromJune 1959 to the middle of 1961.There was first of all one daily newsexchange (1961), then two (1968) andthen a third (1974), in the afternoon,early evening and noon, respectively.

As from 1965 collaboration beganwith Intervision and in 1966 anagreement was signed with theinternational news-film agencies toenable more material to be injectedinto the Network. Through satellitelinks, the Eurovision Network wasextended to other continents. AnEBU Television News CoordinationBureau was opened in New York in1970 to organize material fromNorth America. In 1971 therestarted, firstly on an experimentalbasis, a regular news exchange withthe countries of Latin America(belonging to the Organizacion dela Televisión Iberoamericana � OTI).Since 1974, a regular exchange hasbeen inaugurated with thebroadcasting organizations of the

Arab States Broadcasting Union(ASBU).

Finally, in February 1977, thesatellite EVN was born, linkingsimultaneously the ASBU countriesand those of the Asia-PacificBroadcasting Union (ABU) to thedaily Eurovision news exchanges(EVNs) by regular transmissions viathe Atlantic and Indian Oceansatellites.

For those responsible for the EBU�stelevision news, the objective is toreceive news material fromeverywhere and to distribute it thesame day on a worldwide scale; theyare concerned with rapid, effectiveand reliable information. Theycollaborate closely with theiropposite numbers in the televisionservices of EBU member organ-izations, utilizing to the maximumthe possibilities of the EurovisionNetwork and satellite links.

The figures speak for themselves:from 1,134 items used in some 300transmissions in 1964, to 7,943items in 1,231 transmissions in1983. The news traffic representssome 60% of Eurovision trans-mis s ions . At the moment, anaverage of 22 news items per dayreach Eurovision services, plus theAmerican networks and the other



broadcasting unions such as OIRT,OTI, ASBU and ABU.

The EBU is also concerned withmounting special operations for suchevents as the US Party Conventionsand Presidential Elections, and spaceepics. These operations, which oftenrequire teams on the spot, areprepared well in advance and employall the resources and experiencewhich has been acquired over theyears since Eurovision was born in1954.

If one wishes to sum up Eurovision,it could be said that this creation,born for Europe, is no longer simplyEurope; it is also the world. It is thecatalyst for television exchanges ona worldwide scale which provides amarvellous instrument of mutualenrichment in the service of theviewing public. In the words ofMarcel Bezençon, one of Euro-vision�s founding fathers, �It�s asimple idea which succeeded.�


40 years

Celebrations in Calais

In the beginning . . .

Noble Wilson

The IBU suffered the fate of a dividedEurope, but, undaunted, Bezençon,who in 1950 had become directorgeneral, now put forward an idea fortelevision programme exchanges:�One of the problems that will cropup before long,� he wrote, �is thatof the most economical way to runtelevision. It is clear that the various

. . . Eurovision was a visionaryconcept, rooted in the idea of thepublic service, but in its birth wereelements of practical need and mutualself-interest. To detect its roots, onehas to look at the writings of the late

Marcel Bezençon, when he wasprogramme director of RadioLausanne. In 1948, he proposed tothe EBU�s forerunner, the IBU, thatthere should be a system of inter-national pro-gramme exchanges.



national organizations will have tohave recourse to each other�s outputin order not to weigh down theirown budgets with continualprogramme production.�

His proposal was met with what hedescribed as �peevish skepticism� byhis colleagues in the EBU �for whomprogrammes were a private matter,not to be meddled with by for-eigners.� But gradually, good senseprevailed, and in the spring of 1951the Administrative Council of theUnion agreed to set up a study groupwith a view to creating a system ofexchanges in due course. Thisdecision may have been at leastpartly influenced by an experimentmounted by the BBC TelevisionService in 1950: a complete outsidebroadcast unit was shipped across theEnglish Channel, and on 27 Augusta live relay of Calais en fête createdthe first live television link betweenthe United Kingdom and continentalEurope. The quality and stability ofthe pictures were not wonderful, andthe tower of the Town Hall seemedto sway and shimmer. However, theexperiment did prove that televisionsignals could be microwaved acrosswater.

In 1951, Jean d�Arcy, director ofFrench Television and CecilMcGivern, director of BBC Televi-sion, decided to organize a week ofFranco-British programme ex-changes. In July of the following year,nearly 14 hours of live programmeswere relayed between the RTF andthe BBC. To achieve this, theengineers had to find a way ofconverting the picture line-standardsof each service to that of the other �an electronic barrier which hadsometimes seemed as much of anobstacle as the Alps. The solutionwhich, in more sophisticated form,was in daily use until 1963, wassimple: a camera of one standardwas set up in front of a high-qualitydisplay, carrying the picture of theother standard. In Paris the 819/405line converter was installed in the

southern pillar of the Eiffel Tower,which was the starting point of the475km chain of microwave links tothe roof of the Senate House ofLondon University.

The success of these relaysencouraged the participants to planfurther ventures, but before thesecould be realized there came theannouncement of the Coronation ofQueen Elizabeth II, an event whichwould need all the resources and staffof BBC Television�s OutsideBroadcast Department, and whichwas to be the occasion for the firstmultinational television relay. Thisproject was supported enthusi-astically by the RTF, which not onlyset up a switching centre in Casselto route the signals to both Paris andBreda in the Netherlands, but alsorequested no fewer than 27 soundcircuits for coverage of the event onits television and radio networks.

Thousands of people in France,Belgium, the Netherlands, andGermany joined the people of theUnited Kingdom, who, for the firsttime in history, were able to see theirmonarch crowned.

And so it was that in 1953, a pieceof ancient ceremony and pageantryfinally proved that television couldreach out across Europe and breakthe confining technical chains ofvarying line-standards.

The tide of international cooperationwas running; Europe was recoveringfrom the miseries and hardships thatwere the legacy of the Second WorldWar. People were beginning to travel.Trade was moving across borders. Aninternational television relay wasvery much in the spirit of the age,and the reactions of the audience re-flected the mood: a French viewerwrote to ask for �more programmesto strengthen the ties that bind us.�A German believed that televisionwould �bring nations closertogether.� And the owner of aGerman restaurant, who had

installed a receiver, and filled everyseat, wished there could be a Cor-onation every day!

Such enthusiasms were not sharedby everyone: the technical cost ofbuilding international links wasenormous; artists and musiciansunions were extremely wary abouttheir members� performances beingseen in other countries.

In September 1953, MarcelBezençon, who was to becomechairman of the EBU ProgrammeCommittee, chaired a conference inLondon attended by the programmedirectors of the Belgian, British,Dutch, French, German, Italian andSwiss television services. Building onwhat the Coronation relay had shownto be possible, they decided toorganize a Summer Season ofEuropean Television ProgrammeExchanges to be held from 6 June to4 July 1954. That decision set inmotion a great deal of activity:international links had to beconstructed � and that meant hoursof discussion with cautious tele-communications companies; theprogrammes had to be planned; andthe question of artists� and musicians�performing rights had to be resolved.In fact, a meeting of the InternationalFederations of Actors, Musicians,and Variety Artists resulted in abanning of a number of thescheduled programmes: a Fête deNuit from Versailles and a pro-gramme from the Tivoli Gardens inCopenhagen were among the casual-ties.

By its very nature, television wantsand needs to move quickly, tocommunicate. It took a number ofyears to become less impatient withthe workings of established bodies;and for the latter to come tounderstand the needs of television.The fact that agreement in so manyareas was eventually reached is theresult of countless hours of discussionand negotiation by the members andthe Permanent Services of the EBU.

65



In the spring of 1954, a press releaseafter a meeting of the programmedirectors in Cannes officiallyannounced the plans for a SummerSeason of 18 programmes to betransmitted to and from the eightparticipating services: Belgium (RTB/BRT), Denmark (DR), Germany(ARD), France (RTF), Italy (RAI), theNetherlands (NTS), Switzerland(SSR) and the United Kingdom(BBC). Nine of these programmeswere on a subject which was tobecome a major attraction: football.The World Cup was taking place inBasle that summer, and MarcelBezençon negotiated the televisionrights with the Swiss FootballAssociation Chairman, M. Thomma.�How much are you offering?� saidthe latter. �Nothing� said Bezençon.�Are you joking?� asked Thomma,Bezençon was not joking, but in theend he offered a guarantee to makeup any deficit in gate money to amaximum of 10,000 Swiss francs(less than 2,500 dollars at the time).The contrast with the tens ofmillions of dollars paid out by theEBU for football transmission rightstoday could not be greater.

To ensure the smooth running of theSeason, a temporary coordinationand control centre of a very basicnature was set up in the belfry of thetown hall in Lille. Here, Jean d�Arcy,together with Stéphane Mallein fromthe EBU and Imlay Newbiggin-Wattsof the BBC, manned a battery oftelephones to steer the programmesthrough this prototype Eurovisionnetwork, which extended over 6,400km through 41 relay stations andthree converters, feeding 44transmitters.

For the record: the word �Eurovision�was coined by a British journalist,George Campey. Writing in theLondon Evening Standard on 5November 1951, about a BBCrecorded programme which had beenshown on Dutch television, he ex-plained that: �Eurovision is a systemof collaboration among the West



European countries, includingBritain, by which television pro-grammes will become interchange-able.�

The first programme came fromMontreux, Switzerland. It was arelay of the annual NarcissusFestival, a parade of 25 floats and adozen bands, yodlers, singers and85,000 Swiss francs� worth offlowers. An hour and a half later,the cameras of RAI-RadiotelevisioneItaliana (RAI) toured the Vatican, andHis Holiness Pope Pius XII spoke(in Latin) of the great potential aswell as the dangers of television,before pronouncing a blessing in sixlanguages.

In the days that followed, there wererelays from the Palio at Sienna, aparty for refugee children in theNetherlands, an athletics meeting inGlasgow, a Youth Camp on the Rhinewith Konrad Adenauer as guest, anagricultural show from Denmark, aparade in the Grand�Place inBrussels; the British Royal NavalReserve on parade before QueenElizabeth II; and the RichmondHorse Show in London. And, ofcourse, the World Cup matches. Itwas a gamble. If the audiences hadturned away, if there had beenmassive technical failure, if presscomment had been highly critical,the momentum would not have beensustainable, and the story oftelevision in Europe might have beenverv different.

There is a small number of peoplewho have each been called the �father�of Eurovision. The truth is that thiswas a case of multiple paternity.

There was the vision of MarcelBezençon and the entente cordialebetween Jean d�Arcy and CecilMcGivern � they were the threefoundation stones on whichEurovision stands. But that firstnetwork could not have been builtand made to work without theexperience and managerial drive of

Martin Pulling of the BBC. Thenthere was a small family of like-minded executives: Edouard Haas ofSwitzerland, Bert Leysen and Louis-Philippe Kammans of Belgium,Heinz von Plato of Germany, SergioPugliese of Italy, Jens Lawaetz ofDenmark and Wim Rengelink of theNetherlands. If they all believed inEurovision, they also knew thatworking together would help theirown organizations, both financiallyand in programme terms.

At their first meeting after theSummer Season, they �noted withsatisfaction the great success of theseexperiments, both with the publicand the press of the eight partici-pating countries.� But it had been astrain: elsewhere Cecil McGivernreferred to �Neurovision�. If notwithout reserve, the bulk of presscomment was encouraging: 92% ofFrench viewers were satisfied, and88% wanted more. The Germanpress thought that this kind ofexchange was expensive, but thatsuch experiments should be made.In Italy, Eurovision was thought tobe something that would sellreceivers and the World Cup relayshad been especially popular. TheBritish press was quite fulsome:Eurovision �could forge the firstgenuine link between the peoples ofEurope.� The experiment was �notonly history � it was evidence thatworldwide TV cannot be far away�(it turned out to be 13 years). TheTimes of London also approved butadded loftily that �internationalunderstanding will not be forwardedby the exchange of visual news,unless there is also [ . . . ] someappreciation of the cultures withwhich the events are informed�.There was even some comment inthe American press, which said thatEurovision was �helping to make aunited Europe�.

And then . . .

It was a good beginning, and onewhich had to be followed up if the

evident gains were not to be dis-sipated. The Programme Committeewas already planning a secondexperimental period for the winterof 1954, in which there would beexchanges of normal programmesbetween neighbouring countries,supplemented by some specialtransmissions involving the wholenetwork. Again, about half of thesewere to be sports events; the othersincluded opera, a mass from StPeter�s on Christmas Eve, ballroomdancing, a motor show and a grapeharvest festival. Live programmeexchanges, however, were not theonly concern of the Committee.Bezençon�s concept had been asmuch about films and recordings asabout live relays. Nine membersagreed to produce a film series calledThe Great Cities of Europe. Eachfilm of 15 minutes would be sent toall the other partners, so for the priceof one, each would have a series ofeight programmes. For the smallerand less wealthy networks, this wasa welcome innovation, and onewhich has been tried in varyingforms, and with varying success, overthe years.

The mainspring

The minutes of that early meetingrecord discussion on two subjectswhich were of more than just pass-ing interest:

· Television news exchangesThought to be very important asa means of accelerating thesupply of information on topicalsubjects. It was urged that everyorganization should provideitself with telex equipment.

· Relations with sports promotersIt was noted that it would benecessary to consider openingdiscussions at international levelwith the international sportsfederations.

Eurovision had already identified thetwo areas which were to become its

68




mainspring. In practical terms, it alsobegan to lay out the principles andthe technical requirements forinternational exchanges. One of thesewas that there should be a mutualprovision of technical facilities, suchas monitors, microphones andtelephones at commentary positions.There was also agreement on theways in which Eurovision vision andsound circuits should be identifiedand handled. Eurovision trans-missions were to be introduced by a�panel� and with music � the TeDeum of Marc-Antoine Charpentierhas accompanied the varying formsof the Eurovision star-burst for 40years.


In July 1954 the Week of Exchangesclimaxed in live coverage of thesoccer World Cup.

After this success, Marcel Bezençon,Chair of the Programme Committeeand Director General of the SwissBroadcasting Corporation, his Vice-Chairs Jean d�Arcy, Director ofFrench Television, and René C.McCall, BBC Deputy Director ofTelevision, were convinced thatsomething new had to be done everyyear to promote television.

In late January 1955 the EBUProgramme Committee meeting inMonte Carlo approved the idea oftwo schemes concocted by itsBureau: a European song contest anda Eurovision cup for amateur variety

artists, The Top Town Pro-gramme.

The latter project, lessconvincing than the firstone, fell by the waysideand the EBU GeneralAssembly, presided overby Sir Ian Jacob, BBCDirector General,meeting in the CorsiniPalace in Rome on 19

October 1955, approvedthe organization of a Grand

Prix of European Song, tobe staged, at the Swiss

THE coAfter the success of the 1954International Week ofExchanges, it was felt thereshould be an annualtelevision event. The questionwas, what?



delegation�s suggestion, at Lugano inspring 1956.

Rules

Léo Wallenborn, Director of the EBUAdministrative office, drew up theRules: �The purpose of the Contestis to encourage the creation oforiginal songs and stimulate a spiritof competition among authors andcomposers through internationalcomparison�.

The Planning Subgroup chaired byEdouard Haas, Director of SwissTelevision, then introduced a wholecatalogue of amendments.

The idea of a repeat performance ofthe song with piano accompanimentwas rejected, since it would merelyresult in an undesirable and �non-televisual� lengthening of theprogramme.

Also thrown out was a request thateach participating broadcaster beauthorized to seat its own producerat the control desk. According to thebrand-new principles of the infantEurovision, the originating broad-caster must assume full responsibilityfor the programme. The involvementof a foreign colleague would anyway�inevitably disrupt the organizationof production work�. One must

avoid the danger of turning thecompetition into a producers�contest; each performer should bepresented on screen in a uniformway to give all the songs an equalchance.

Thumbs down likewise forshortening the rehearsals to two days:�three days will be scarcely sufficientto properly organize the staging offourteen entries�.

Further negatived was the idea ofendowing the contest with cashprizes, since:

· no request for a credit had beenlodged with the EBU Adminis-traive Council (!),

· experience at the San Remo SongContest showed that the awardof a cash prize was in no way acondition for the success of thecontest, �in which the musicpublishers of all participants�countries would certainly not failto take an interest� ( !).

Another idea was mooted, which hastaken hold: decentralization of theinternational jury. It was not possibleto put this into effect for the firstcontest, since it was difficult or evenimpossible to obtain a sufficientnumber of telephone lines in Lugano

and the programme already involvedattendance by a large number ofcommentators. The EBU TechnicalCentre in Brussels subsequentlysolved this problem by setting up aradial voting network.

Finally, after hard bargaining, thePlanning Subgroup decided not totwin the European song contest withthe Eurovision amateurs cup. TheTop Town Programme was dead andburied.

In the end the amended Rules wereadopted and provided that eachparticipating broadcaster (not morethan one per country) could enterone or two original songs lasting 3�3 1/2 minutes and that the backingorchestra would comprise 24musicians. The titular conductorwould be from the Radiosa Ensembleof Italian Swiss Radio, but eachbroadcaster could appoint a con-ductor to accompany its star.

The jury consisted of two personsper participating broadcaster, whowould judge the entries on the smallscreen in a situation approximatingas closely as possible to familyviewing.

�Presentation in the best technicalconditions possible� was providedfor in the text. Was there mistrust of


ontest


the Swiss, who had neverthelessproved their worth at Montreux andduring the soccer World Cup � orwas it just a form of words designedto reassure the competitors?

The jury�s task was simple. Of thefourteen entries each juror had tochoose the best ten in his/her opinionand classify them in order ofpreference by awarding 10 points tothe entry they considered best, 9 tothe next and so on. The winner waschosen by adding up the pointsawarded. Since the individualranking was based on each juror�sindividual tastes and thus could besuspected of partiality, the loserscould explain their defeat by �juryincompetence�!

With the passage of time there wereattempts to enlarge juries and inventmore sophisticated voting pro-cedures. This never completelyallayed the suspicions, and eventoday there are malicious spirits whosee obscure trickery behind theannouncement and analysis of theresults.

Lugano

The choice of Lugano was motivatedby the fact that the radio studio hada permanent light music ensemblewhose members were part of the SSRestablishment and not unionized,thus shielding the contest againstcostly claims from musicians fortelevision transmission. However, atthe time Lugano had no television.The viewers of Ticino received RAIprogrammes. So Switzerland�s oneand only OB van and crew weredespatched from Zürich.

With this contest the EBU wanted topull off a major coup at European leveland was urged to publicize the eventwidely in dailies and magazines, andto select the national entry via publiceliminators. Discreet allusions topotential interest among the musicpublishers opened the door to supportfrom the light music industry.

In other words television representedan effective source of outsidesupport, since the record sleeve couldcarry the notice �Grand Prix of theEurovision Song Contest�.

Rehearsals for the first EurovisionSong Contest began at the LuganoTeatro-Kursaal on 21 May 1956. TheRadiosa orchestra, augmented by afew strings from Italian Swiss Radio,was conducted by Maestro FernandoPaggi. The show was directed byFranco Marazzi, a young producerof light entertainment programmeswho was later to become the firstdirector of Italian Swiss Television.Franco Marazzi had the theatre filledwith flowers, to lend warmth to asetting televised in black and white.

The presenter was an experiencedanchor from Italian Swiss Radio,Lohengrin Filippo, who, despite hisWagnerian first name, had a definiteflair for light entertainment andpolyglot gifts which enabled him toget the show across to aninternational audience.

Fourteen songs were entered for thecontest, which played to a packedhouse. Was the audience there forthe still unknown Eurovision, or forthe � very popular � Radiosaorchestra and the star vocalists?

The organizers at Italian Swiss Radiohad drawn up the following runningorder: Netherlands, Switzerland,Belgium, Germany, France, Luxem-bourg, Italy.

Transmission on the Eurovisionnetwork took place on 24 May 1956from 21:00 to 22:30, relayed live byten countries (Austria, Belgium,Denmark, France, Germany, Italy,Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switz-erland, United Kingdom). Seven TVnetworks took the broadcast live andthirteen deferred.

The jury picked as the winner theSwiss entry �Refrains�, lyrics byEmile Gardaz and music by Géo

Voumard, performed by Lys Assia,who received no personal award:winners� medals were introducedonly later.

�Refrains�, selected by nationalpublic eliminators, was largelyuncontested because the song wasreally the best and, unlike laterwinning entries, was destined tobecome a genuine international hit� even without wholeheartedsupport from the record industry,whose attention at the time wasfocused on the tricky changeoverfrom 78s to 33rpm.

During her encore Lys Assia had amemory lapse and ended the songwith a series of �la-la-la-la�s�, thesinger�s emotion communicatingitself to the live audience and theoutside world.

Géo Voumard and Emile Gardaz onlyheard of their success next day . . .that evening they had dined withfriends far from Lugano!

After this first successful try-out andthe favourable response, the Pro-gramme Committee decided to putthe contest on again. It requested are-examination of the votingprocedure, the vote-counting havingproved too time-consuming.

One far-sighted member of theCommittee already thought it mightbe an idea to have the televisionaudience participate in the jury.



The songs

Netherlands

’DE VOGELS VAN HOLLAND’

Lyrics: Annie Schmidt.

Music: Cor Lemaine.

Performed by: Jetty Paerl.

Conductor: Fernando Paggi

’VOOR GOED VOORBIJ’

Lyrics and score: Jelle de Vries.

Performed by: Corry Brokken.


Switzerland

’DAS ALTE KARUSSELL’

Lyrics and score: Georg Betz-Stahl.

Performed by: Lys Assia (with

backing group Radiosa).


’REFRAINS’

Lyrics: Émile Gardaz. Music: Géo

Voumard. Performed by: Lys Assia

(with backing group Radiosa).

Condcutor: Fernando Paggi

Belgium

’MESSIEURS LES NOYÉS DE LA

SEINE’

Lyrics: Robert Montai.

Music: Jean Miret and Jack Say.

Performed by: Fred Leclercq.

Conductor: Léo Souris

’LE PLUS BEAU JOUR DE MA VIE’

Lyrics: David Bée. Music: Claude

Alix. Singer: Mony Marc.

Conductor: Léo Souris

Germany

’DAS LIED VOM GROSSEN GLUECK’

Lyrics and music: Walter Andreas

Schwarz. Performed by: Walter

Andreas Schwarz.


’SO GEHT DAS JEDE NACHT’

Lyrics: Peter Mosser. Music: Lothar

Olias. Singer: Freddy Quinn.

Performed by: Fernando Paggi

France

’LE TEMPS PERDU’

Lyrics: Rachèle Thoreau.

Music: André Lodge.

Performed by: Mathé Altéry.

Conductor: Franck Pourcel

’IL EST LÀ’

Lyrics and score: Simone Vallauris.

Performed by: Dany Dauberson.

Conductor: Franck Pourcel

Luxembourg

’NE CROIS PAS’

Lyrics and score: Christian

Guitttreau.

Performed by: Michèle Arnaud.

Conductor: Jacques Lassry

’LES AMANTS DE MINUIT’

Lyrics: Simone Laurencin.

Music: Pierre Lambry.

Performed by: Michèle Arnaud.

Conductor: Jacques Lassry

Italy

’APRITE LE FINESTRE’

Lyrics: Pinchi.

Music: Virgilio Panzuti.

Perfomed by: Franca Raimondi.

Conductor: Gian Stellari

’AMAMI SE VUOI’

Lyrics: Mario Panzeri.

Music: Vittorio Mascheroni.

Performed by: Tonina Torrielli.

Conductor: Gian Stellari



50th cCorrie Brokkens (Netherlands) winswith �Net als toen�.

1958From now on the winning countryhosts the next year�s EurovisionGrand Prix, unless there areexceptional reasons. France winswith André�s Claveau�s �Dors monamour�.

1959The Netherlands wins again, thistime it�s Teddy Scholten with �Eenbeetje�.

1960France has a second win with �TomPillibi�, performed by JacquelineBoyer.

1961There are 16 singers competing, andits Luxembourg with Jean-ClaudePascal and his song �Nous, lesamoureux� that wins.

1962A new scoring system is introduced.Belgium, Spain, Austria and theNetherlands leave empty-handed;Isabelle Aubret from France makes itto the top with �Un premier amour�.

1963Nana Mouskouri (Luxembourg)and Françoise Hardy (Monaco)

When you hear “Eurovision”,you think of . . .

2005

. . . the Eurovision Song Contest, anidea that germinated in 1954 throughto 1956.

1956The event is held in Lugano,Switzerland. Seven countries partici-pated in this first contest. Eachparticipant was allowed to submittwo songs in the language theywanted. The only restriction: theperformance was limited to 3½minutes. The winner was chosen bya jury consisting of two delegatesfrom each country who could awardbetween 1 and 10 points. The winneris Lys Assia for Switzerland with thesong �Refrain�.

1957The Eurovision Grand Prix movesto West Germany, the new hostingcountry. The rule that determinesthat the winner�s home country willbe hosting the next contest did notexist then!

New:

· only one song per participant

· the scoreboard enters the scene


enter but only reach the 7th and5 t h p l a c e s r e s p e c t i v e l y a sGre the and Jo rgen Ingmannfrom Denmark win with �Danse-vise � .

1964To make the contest more excitingthe voting system is changed again:each jury can only award 9 points.Udo Jürgens (for Austria) makes hisdebut and does not let his 5th placeput him off � he takes part again thefollowing year. However, this timehe can only congratulate GigliolaCinquetti from Italy for her song�Non ho l�età�.

1965Luxembourg wins. Thanks to FranceGall with her song �Poupée de cire,poupée de son� by Serge Gainsbourg.

1966From now on all contestants mustsing their song in their own language.This works well for Austria and, asif he had known, Udo Jürgens sang�Merci, chérie� (�Thank you�).

1967Sandie Shaw for the UnitedKingdom sings her way to victorywith �Puppet on a string�. This wassomething Switzerland un-fortunately didn�t manage � 0points!

1968Massiel, Spain, makes it onto themedallists� podium with �La, la, la�� beating Cliff Richard�s�Congratulations�.

1969An extraordinary year: 4 out of the16 countries share the Grand Prix �France (Frida Boccara with �Un jour,un enfant�), Netherlands (Lenny Kuhrwith �De troubadour�), Spain (Saloméwith �Vivo cantando�) and UK (Luluwith �Boom bang a bang�).

1970The Netherlands is the host countrybut it�s Dana from Ireland thatcelebrates her victory with �All kindsof everything�.

1971The voting system is amended: a newjury constitution and the award of 1to 10 points per song. �Un banc, unarbre, une rue� is a winner forSéverine of Monaco.

1972�Après toi� (�After you�) and so indeedwere all the other singers after theperformance of Vicky Leandros(Luxembourg).

1973Change of rules: Everyone cansing in the language of their

choice . For the second con-secutive year, Luxembourg makesit to the very top with Anne-MarieDavid and the song �Tu tereconnaîtras�.

1974It�s ABBA year. �Waterloo� turnsout to be anything but a defeat.Sweden wins, and ABBA was andwill be the all time favourite of thecontest.

1975A new scoring system. 1�8, 10,12.It�s the hour for Teach-in from theNetherlands with: �Ding DingeDong�.

1976Brotherhood of Man for the UK winswith the plea �Save Your Kisses for Me�.

1977Another change of direction: allcontestants have to sing in theirnative language again. MarieMyriam, France, wins with �L�oiseauet l�enfant�.

1978Israel�s Ihzar Cohen and theAlphabeta wins with �A-Ba-Ni-Bi�.

1979�Hallelujah�, Israel does it again withGali Atari & Milk and Honey.


contest


1980Morocco enters the contest. JohnnyLogan and Chorus & Sax win forIreland with �What�s another year�.

1981Egypt broadcasts the contest for thefirst time. Bucks Fizz takes thetrophy for the UK with �Making yourmind up�.

1982The world of pop needs �Einbisschen Frieden� (�A little bit ofpeace�). Nicole takes the prize forGermany.

1983Australia broadcasts the contestfor the first time. Luxembourg isthe winner with Corinne Hermesand her song �Si la vie est uncadeau�.

1984Herrey�s rendition of �Diggi-loo-diggi-ley� wins for Sweden.

1985This is the first time the EurovisionSong Contest is broadcast viasatellite. The Bobbysocks fromNorway let it swing and get the cupwith �La det swinge�.

1986�J�aime la vie�: 15-year-old SandraKim wins first place for Belgium.

1987Remember 1980: same country, samestar, same place � only a differenttitle. Johnny Logan is the first artistto win the ESC for the second time,this time with �Hold me now�.

1988And the winner is . . . Switzerland!Céline Dion makes it possible with�Ne partez pas sans moi�. The restis history.

1989Another new rule: only those over16 can enter the contest. Riva and�Rock Me� wins for Yugoslavia.

1990A new idea: postcards presenting theparticipants are introduced. TotoCutugno and his song �Insieme 1992�had no reason to fear the context.First place!

1991France and Sweden are level onpoints. In the end, Carola wins with�Fangad av en stormvind�, leavingAmina singing �C�est le dernier quia parlé qui a raison� behind.

1992Johnny Logan: Take 3! Ireland assertsitself again with a song by JohnnyLogan, �Why me?� but this time thesinger is Linda Martin.

1993And Ireland�s run on luck continues.It earns its 5th victory thanks toNiamh Kavanagh with �In youreyes�.

1994It�s almost becoming routine: for thethird time in a row, the Irish winwhen Paul Harrington and CharlieMcGettigan pull it off with �Rock�n�roll kids�.

1995�Nocturne� grants Secret Garden itsvictory. Norway goes into raptures!

1996The number of participants is limitedto a maximum of 23 countries. Backto Ireland again! The 7th victory inthe history of the contest is won byEimear Quinn with �The Voice�.

1997A bit of variety at the top: Katrinaand the Waves take the next event tothe UK with �Love Shine a Light�.

1998Televoting is introduced in thecountr ies with the necessaryinfrastructure. With �Diva� DanaInternational strutts onto thepodium in her high heels forIsrael!

1999Change of rules once again:contestants can choose the languagethey want to sing in. �Take me toyour heaven�: Sweden�s CharlotteNilsson�s plea was answered � firstplace in the contest paradise.

2000The contest goes multimedia: for thefirst time the event is broadcast liveon the Internet; all fans in Asia cannow be reached via permanentfacilities; and a commercial CDfeaturing all 24 songs comes out. TheOlsen Brothers from Denmark fly tofirst place �On the Wings of Love�.

2001Held in front of an audience of38,000 at Parken Stadium inCopenhagen, the biggest event todate, �Everybody� wins for TanelPadar, Dave Benton and 2XL fromEstonia.

2002The number of participatingcountries is raised to 24. �I wanna�and want she did: thanks to MarieN the contest travels from Estoniato Latvia.

2003From Riga, Sertab Erener with�Everyway that I can� takes thecontest to Istanbul.

2004A first: the contest will be held ontwo days: a qualifying round and afinale. A new record: 36 countriesparticipate.


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