Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 1956/Archive 1

Archive 1

Radio contest?

"This dumb contest was mainly a radio program, though there were cameras in the studio for the benefit of the few Europeans who had television." This is a strange statement - the contest was developped for television to start with. Why else would anyone had called it EuroVISION Song Contest had it been designed to be heard only? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tobsonhelsinki (talk • contribs) 17:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC).

Score sheet

Does there need to be a "score sheet"-section, if the points never were made public?--90.224.50.167 14:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The order

I've listened to the audio recording, and it seems the second song from Luxembourg was performed before the second from France, not like in the article. I don't know why?Eurowizion 20:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

was any of the history clips in 2013 from 1956

if that is the case it means that more have survived. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.208.59.120 (talk) 20:43, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems that this took place whilst the BBC was interviewing people, but will have to look on the official site. --[[ axg ◉ talk ]] 21:33, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Having seen it, I don't think there was. --[[ axg ◉ talk ]] 23:18, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Minimap

Does someone know the meaning behind Algeria participating in 1956? They have never taken part in Eurovision. Alts (talk) 20:39, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

@Alts: During this time (and until 1962) Algeria was part of France as the French Fourth Republic. -- AxG / ✉ / 10 years of editing 21:00, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Alts (talk) 09:08, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Final Placings

I think this edit should be removed. I cannot see any official source for the final placings. KobiNew (talk) 10:34, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Reception?

I found a short review by Norman Cook in the Liverpool Echo from the day after the broadcast. It reads:

"The Eurovision Song Competition from Lugano proved a theory to which I have long subscribed. And that is that the words of popular songs can be complete gibberish but yet remain acceptable to the viewing multitudes. Take one pretty girl, pour her into a skin-tight frock, give her a microphone to cover up the fact that she can't sing, add a syrupy orchestra—and you have a big hit. It doesn't matter too much what sort of a noise comes out, as long as the girls are good to look at. The trouble with last night's Eurovision transmission was that, because of poor picture quality, the girls weren't even particularly good to look at. The programme was a waste of valuable viewing time."

References

The article presently has no reception section, and I did not immediately find any other reviews to justify one, so I'll leave it here for other editors to consider. Regards, IceWelder [✉] 15:45, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 1956/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 05:49, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

I've only really watched one and a half ESCs, but from what I do know about the contest, this is like early American football to the sport today—nigh unrecognizable! Some copy cleanup to do. Consider adding alt text. Looks good though. Pinging Sims2aholic8 for the 7-day hold on this. Ping me when you're done making changes. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 06:22, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Copy changes

Lead

• the majority of the broadcast is however available in audio Set off "however" with commas: "is, however, available"

Origins

• "Corportation" typo
• "Following the formation of the EBU" add comma
• Don't capitalize "president". MOS:JOBTITLES
• Venice International Song Festival—the gloss in the first paragraph of Format belongs here on first mention.

Format

• Each participating organisation had sole discretion on how to select their entries for the contest, but were strongly encouraged by the EBU to hold their own national contests to determine their representatives. Remove the comma or add "the organisations" before "were strongly encouraged". See User:Sammi Brie/Commas in sentences for more. Other errors of this type are denoted (C in S)
• Each song was accompanied by the Radiosa Orchestra, supplemented by the strings of the Italian Swiss Radio Symphony Orchestra, with 24 members total, which was presided over by the contest's musical director, Fernando Paggi. Consider reflowing this sentence because of the number of commas.
• The event was hosted by in Italian by Lohengrin Filipello — extra "by"
• Upon the announcement of the results only the winning song was named, with the full breakdown of the jury votes not revealed. — add comma after "the results"

Participating countries

• Austria and Denmark are believed to have also been interested in participating, however broadcasters from those countries reportedly missed the cut-off point for entry; these two countries, as well as the United Kingdom, would however broadcast the contest along with the participating countries, with the United Kingdom's BBC having chosen to not send an entry for this event in favour of organising their own contest, the Festival of British Popular Songs. This is a long sentence. It also needs a MOS:HOWEVER fix. Consider Austria and Denmark are believed to have also been interested in participating; however, broadcasters from those countries reportedly missed the cut-off point for entry. These two countries, as well as the United Kingdom, would broadcast the contest along with the participating countries, with the United Kingdom's BBC having chosen to not send an entry for this event in favour of organising their own contest, the Festival of British Popular Songs.
• The full results of the contest were not revealed, and have not been retained by the EBU. — remove comma (C in S) (There is also a C in S error in footnote a)
• Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below. — add a comma after "commentators" to complete the appositive
• Audio of most of the contest have however survived — should be "has, however, survived"

Source spot checks

I randomly selected six references to check. All pass (AGF on 14).

• 7: This official history of Eurovision is generally a bit redundant to ref 5, but with 5 it does check out.
• 13: Mentions the venue name as "Teatro Kursaal".
• 14: Official history of the Casino Lugano mentions the opening of the casino. I presume offline source [15] has more information on its demolition?
• 31: Official list of ESC winners backs up the claims about "Refrain"
• 40: La Stampa newspaper archive mentions television airing
• 42: Seems a bit of a bare page, but it does link to the RTL site, and if they were the EBU member this should be self-evident.

Other

• There are two freely licensed images and one fair-use image with an appropriate rationale. The logo is PD-textlogo and is also used by the EBU itself (I was wondering how authentic it'd be, but if even Eurovision use it...) They do need alt text (not required strictly for GA but I always encourage editors to add it).
• Earwig catches a source that definitely copied from a recent revision of this article (97.4%). Beyond that, Earwig mostly catches organization names and formulations like "original language, as well as translations".
• Run IABot again, as not all references archived.

• @Sammi Brie: Thanks for conducting this review! I believe I have now covered all the points raised above (and gained a better understanding of commas along the way). Let me know if there is anything further you need in order to pass this article. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:58, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The actual scoring?!

I was browsing in Google Books when I found the places of the songs. The book was copyrighted, I forgot which one it was but here are the top 3 (according to the book):

1st: Switzerland - Lys Assia - Refrain 2nd: Belgium - Mony Marc - Le Plus Beau Jour De Ma Vie 3rd: Germany - Freddy Quinn - So Geht Das Jede Nacht

Is this verifiable? Could it be true? --Ajitirj (talk) 14:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested in discussing this, here is the link to the book. — /an.dre.jiˈʃor//tɔːk/ 20:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I have added the information from the book. Grk1011 (talk) 00:11, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

There is no other source than that book. I don't think that count as verifiable. Dinsdagskind (talk) 09:31, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The votes have never been disclosed, that's also what the book says and the author doesn't say where he got the results from. So I will edit the article and say the results are unknown, I will mention the book though.

With only 14 jury members in all, two for each country, each casting one vote, there would only have been 14 votes to share between 14 songs. Which means several songs would probably have ended with "Nul Points", unless each song received one vote. So the songs could not have received rankings from 1 to 14 - there would have been several shared places. The only thing that is known is that "Refrain" was proclaimed the winner.

Dinsdagskind (talk) 19:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I found this magazine that was published a month after the contest https://m.facebook.com/106776711218916/photos/a.106929614536959/109214110975176/?type=3&source=48&__tn__=EHH-R It says that Fud Leclerc’s song was "not reaffirmed by the juries and was for the most part personal.", meaning her got a low score. I’m not sure what the other descriptions say, or if the magazine even has more results to imply, but for anyone who wants to translate it, it’s in Italian. Jusherman (talk) 19:49, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Les Trois Menestrels interval act song

Amonth ago, I was able to contact Eurovision researcher, Louis Zandt (person who found the 1956 photos for EurovisionArtists.nl) via email. Since then, he handed me some really useful info, such as a cleaner version of the audio from 1964 with partial Danish commentary (source in the 1964 article). He also has half of the Dutch commentary from 1964, and he plans to put it on the NPO website.

I asked him about what the second interval from 1956 was, and he said it was "Ma mie, ma caravelle," as he saw a video of the trio wearing the same outfits from Lugano. To add more confirmation, it was recorded in 1956, the same year. It also doesn’t appear they wear the outfits in any other archived performance.

He doesn’t give me a source, but he used his own research. Since he is an expert at doing research, I do believe this is correct.

Les Joyeux Rossignols, the first interval actors, whistled the song "Audabe d'oiseaux," which was a popular French accordion song. They also recorded it on some of their albums, and they sound similar. Jusherman (talk) 03:54, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Jusherman: I have no reason to doubt the autheticity or truthfulness about the statements above, however that still doesn't get round the fact that Wikipedia is based on verifibility, as in the ability of the readers to check that the information contained on Wikipedia comes from reliable sources. Although what you have provided is most likely true, it's unverifiable because we can't provide a reliable source to state so, as it largely falls under a self-published source, i.e. someone doing their own research. As it's not been published anywhere online, e.g. through a news source or an official Eurovision website where editorial standards exist, externally to conversations between individuals, then this is not something we can publish on this article and would violate the good article criteria which the article was rated against three months ago to promote it to GA status. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:06, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Winner’s point margin

Yesterday, one of my contacts purchased an Italian newspaper that had a section about the 1956 contest, including new photos that previously weren’t online.

Not only did the magazine further confirm the voting system, but the journalists asked RSI director, Stelio Molo, about the winning margin of "Refrain," to which he confirmed Refrain won by a 2 point difference, and the remaining songs weren’t far off from the top 2.

FRAGMENT:

Abbiamo potuto avvicinare, durante la prelibata «cena fredda» offerta agli invitati nel saloni superiori del Kursaal il dottor Molo, direttore della RSI che oltre ad averci precisato quanto sopra ci ha cortesemente vluto rispondere ad alcune domande. […] Siamo venuti così a conoscenza che lo scarto dalla prima canzone classificata adla seconda è stato di due punti e tutte le altre candidate non sono finite lontane.

TRANSLATION:

During the delicious "cold dinner" offered to the guests in the upper halls of the Kursaal, we could approach Dr. Molo, director of the RSI who, apart from clarifying the above, wanted to answer some questions kindly. […] We thus came to know that the gap from the first classified song to the second was two points and all the other candidates did not finish far away.

This seems to debunk the fact that "Refrain" won with 102 points, since if 140 total votes are available, then the 2nd placing song would have 100 votes, and 102+100=202, which is more than 140.

Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t mention any other result hints, nor who actually got 2nd place. However, the German commentator from 1980 may or may not have confirmed that Germany got 2nd place, as he says something along the lines of “this is the second time we’ve gotten second place,” since they didn’t come 2nd in any of the other years, but this may or may not be true, since the rumors of Germany getting 2nd could’ve dated back during 1980 or even before.

Not only that, but the newspaper also confirms that the hosting rule, where the winning country gets to host the next contest, was attempted even in the beginning.

FRAGMENT:

Il prossimo anno, sempre secondo il regolamento, la Svizzera ospiterà ancora le canzoni partecipanti al II Gran Premio

TRANSLATION:

Next year, again according to the regulations, Switzerland will once again host the songs participating in the II Grand Prix

Switzerland likely didn’t host due to budget constraints, similar to other countries not hosting twice in a row.

I wish I knew what the issue was called and how to properly source it, and I wish I could provide proof of the paper’s existence outside of this info, but I hope I get the name of the issue soon. Jusherman (talk) 07:13, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Let's unpack these claims point by point:

• 1) The scoring system for the 1956 contest, going by the reliable sources in this article, is that every juror ranked every song between 1 and 10 (similar to how the entries were scored between 1971 and 1973). Therefore the theoretical maximum is 140, as two jurors per country, 7 contries competing, so 14 total jurors that can give a maximum of 10 points to any entry.
• 2) The rumour that Germany came second is largely based on the fact that the 1957 contest was held in Germany. In fact the reason behind this was that originally it was envisaged that the host country would rotate every year, regardless of who won the contest. This can be seen even in 1958, when the Dutch were only given hosting rights after every other country declined. It was only then, and then for the 1959 contest, that the winner was given the hosting rights in the first instance. This information has been substantiated with reliable sources available to us online.
• 3) The rules of the 1956 contest, which are available online, make no reference to where the following year's contest would be held. I can't speak for the rules of the 1957 contest, but these were likely drafted following the decision to host the contest in Germany.

It's certainly good to be trying to piece together bits about the 1956 contest, and I've done my best to draw together a good article on the subject already. I can't however speak to how reliable or verifiable the newspaper your contact purchased. We would need this information before trying to incorporate any of these claims into the article. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

The issue is #23, the magazine is called Settimana Radio TV, and at the top of the magazine, the code is Anno III • N. 23 • 3-9 giugno 1956

The section where they talk about the 1956 contest is called: IL PREMIO EUROVISIONE 1956 PER LÀ CANZONE EUROPEA A LUGANO: HA VINTO IL REFRAIN DI MARCA ELVETICA

Furthermore, this was the eBay listing for the magazine. https://www.ebay.it/itm/295444487041?hash=item44c9dd1b81:g:kdoAAOSwIJhjrZr~&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4A3QIQoLLUZdsMmhGlMLn5IN1g5oktt14fF0%2Fo1lCwWGMcRl%2BsubnnL%2Fh6annbYLGRx9uHMMvxOYCuVihS8pXmfi1hVxq326ZWmU3%2FjHqSMe%2BnsJjFwyP0GbV%2BMMWCA5k%2FJo%2Fgn4XfpdHjAJFnKNAui3cU%2FltQ5sAYsyeD676YlQl3DaZJlleXPqClVntlijNeUokx2ckVhQHE4h4FGz%2FoTOjXC9LJuSZPLf0U2FE6QrriEn%2FHPkLMFxIpCVtGHisZpTCk9okTtJ18b3eqFd4FHtwUbUbUIDp76sTM9Fgke9%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR7K35ImRYg

I’m still unsure how to correctly source a magazine that’s not online, apart from an online listing, so if you could make the source for me, that would be great. Jusherman (talk) 21:44, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I saw your edit, which I have to thank you very much for. I’m also very happy more information about 1956 is being revealed.

However, something you could edit is how the 2 point gap is confirmed by someone involved in the show, while the 102 point claim isn’t, further debunking the claim.

One of my contacts also found another magazine that says Switzerland would host the 1957 contest. Fortunately, it’s digitized and online, so we could put this is as a wikisource.

https://www.sbt.ti.ch/quotidiani-public-pdf/main_part.php?fullscreen=true&paper=ls&day=26&month=5&year=1956&page=1&allpages=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8&papername=Libera%20Stampa (page #7)

Not really sure how the claims you said fit in here, as both claims of Switzerland hosting again come from different archives and issues, this one coming from La Stampa, and the previous one being from Settimana Radio TV. Jusherman (talk) 05:32, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

1956 Rebroadcast?

I’ve been in contact with an expert Eurovision researcher for almost a year now, and he’s told me lots of beneficial info, and sent me very interesting media, such as sending me high quality scans of the 1964 transmission frames and having partial Dutch radio commentary from 1964. He also found out that the 1956 audio as we know it was discovered in the 1980s by an unknown Swiss EBU broadcaster.

Yesterday, he sent me an online magazine from Giornale de Populo, the same newspaper company that confirmed the 2nd interval act, which says the 1956 contest was rebroadcast in June 10, 1956. Unfortunately he didn’t send me the link, but he sent me a screenshot instead.

This might confirm that 1956 was indeed saved, but he didn’t tell me if it was the TV or radio broadcast, or both.

He’s also confused on how RSI has been mentioned several times in these rare newspapers, even though RSI didn’t exist until 1958. Jusherman (talk) 05:42, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Old editions of "Giornale del Popolo" can be accessed through the online newspapers archive of the Ticinese library system here: [1]. It may be available there, if you know the date the newspaper was published.

RSI itself was founded in 1931, with the first experimental Italian-language radio station (Radio Monte Ceneri) starting in 1925 followed by regular radio broadcasts from 1933, however Italian-language television broadcasts by RSI did not commence until 1958. This is probably where the confusion lies, and I would posit that in Italian-language media it was probably common enough to refer to the entirety of SRG SSR as "RSI" to avoid confusion. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:23, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

@Jusherman: Date? Also would they be kind to publish the frames from 1964 somewhere? ImStevan (talk) 19:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The newspaper was issued on June 9 or 10, 1956. The key word is "Eurovisione," and you’ll find the info on Radi an Television programmes.

The researcher sent an email to a contact who works for RSI about the magazines and articles regarding the 1956 contest, but the contact is out of office until the end of June. Jusherman (talk) 23:50, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The 9 June 1956 edition of Giornale del Popolo shows that there was a repeat broadcast of the contest on radio on Sunday 10 June: [2] "RSI" refers in this instance to what is now known as RSI Rete Uno, which was the only Italian-language radio station broadcast by SRG SSR (and most likely in all of Switzerland). This information, although interesting, isn't exactly relevant to the article however. If it were a repeat television broadcast then sure, but we already have information in the article that audio recordings exist. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:20, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Today, the researcher told me found another newspaper that says that the contest was rebroadcast on radio again in July 4, 1956. Again, he didn’t provide any links (only a screenshot), but the screenshot was from the newspaper “Ticino Gazette.” Jusherman (talk) 04:44, 28 June 2023 (UTC)