Intro Post

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Introduction

The 1967 edition of Eurovision was hosted in Vienna, Austria, in a building that once was a palace for the Habsburg dynasty. Appropriately enough, I watched it with commentary in Austrian German. This contest began a decline in participating countries that lasted until 1970, after which countries started joining again. This time, only Denmark didn’t return from last year, not to rejoin Eurovision until 1978. Because of this, Eurovision 1966 was the last contest to feature every country that had ever previously participated. I wonder how fans felt when more and more countries started to leave? Maybe they were thinking this contest was soon to die, but they were completely wrong.

Normally in this era of Eurovision, the presenter mostly spoke the host country’s language, plus some obligatory introduction in French and English. However, Erica Vaal went the extra mile and announced the introduction in as many languages as she knew: German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. Then she apologized in English to all the countries whose languages she didn’t have the time to learn. I found that incredibly cool.

This contest returned to the original voting system where each country had ten votes to distribute across each entry. I’m guessing this was done to mitigate bloc voting, and it worked! For this contest, at least. It also caused a bunch of clumsiness on the scoreboard operators’ part.