Eurovision 1966: Everything changes but Udo | Super-cut with animated scoreboard

An edited down version of the Eurovision Song Contest 1966 from Luxembourg, with a scoreboard using today’s technology. This all started as a lockdown project!

This edit will give a flavour of the evening (Saturday 5th March) with the French commentary from former contestant, François Deguelt.

There’s some common themes that are often mentioned about 1966…before someone interrupts with the fact that Åse Kleveland wore a pant-suit instead of a skirt. As interesting as that is, the rest of her performance and her final position was more interesting, let alone the rest. As my title suggests, a lot changed this year, although some things stayed the same.
For the third year, Udo Jürgens represented Austria – his spell-binding performances had been climbing up the scoreboard, but this year the apparent hindrance of singing in German was overcome. I still think ‘Sag ihr, ich lass sie grüßen’ is a much better entry, but every contest is a unique mix of jurors and other entrants and in 66, the mix was right. The other non-unique part of 1966 was CLT hosting in Luxembourg, as in 62, they produced a slick production that clipped along nicely. You can notice how far we’ve come in terms of cameras now we have our first moving background!
The other thing to change was the rules – home country langauges only please, although this would mainly irritate the Nordic block, whose artists, as David Jacobs mentioned in 1965, were enjoying more success with English language records. The Nordic bloc seems to have responded with unprecedented neighbourly voting, so much so the audience started jeering. I won’t recount all the vote swapping (which happened with other areas of the continent too) but it played a part in a final scoreboard that looks totally different to the 10 that preceded it.
The aimable and professional presenter, Josiane Shen, even stopped and gestured when France was awarded in sole point of the night. The UK, who seemed likely to win some time soon, made a massive misstep with Kenneth McKellar and a song that would have suited 1957 – luckily his kilt earned him 5 points from Dublin. It was still the UK’s worst performance by far, but at least a top-half result was rescued from the debris. Italy, France and Denmark would suffer their worst result so far too, and Sweden, Norway and Austria would hold on to 1966 as being their best year for a long time to come – with Austria not repeating this win until 2014.
Amongst all this trend turbulence, it’s important to remember that with the 135369 voting system, Austria dominated the board eventually – yet because of the threat of a ‘9’, they remained un-crowned until late on the sequence. The difference between second place and tenth place was just that same amount, 9. Although there was whisker of difference between the intense, intelligent performance of Åse Kleveland and the more irreverent jazziness of Lill Lindfors & Svante Thuresson – there would be a world of difference between their hosting qualities in 1985/6.
Special mention to Milly Scott, who doesn’t get the meme attention she deserves. Such a fun performance, with extra credit going for using the old escaliers! The first to use a hand-held mic (with cable) and of course, she continued to push the racial boundaries of the Contest.

*DESIGN AND THE BOARD*
I’ve reverted to the 1962 board, as it seems that happened at the actual contest – no complex thermometer bars and we’re back to the older style number display. I decided to retain the excellent design solution for the 135369 system though, so the dice remain. I’ve also retained the 1962 medal – I know they updated it for 1966, but I preferred the other one, and let’s bet honest, it’s a lion with CLT on it…can’t go wrong! Typeface wise, I had fun. I was convinced the board in 66 was using something similar to Charles Wright, the typeface used on UK licence plates. It’s designed to be…readable at a distance! However, on closer inspection I’m not sure I’m right. Either way, I went for it and I quite enjoyed using it. It’s actually ‘Mandatory’ from K-Type (free). Elsewhere I found the lovely Cinzel Decorative from Google Fonts (check out the ligatures!) and Vampiro One, which mimics the brush stoke typeface used on CLT’s song lower thirds. Cinzel is quite close to that used on the artwork seen on Wiki, and goes for a mock art deco theme.

*TRANSFER NEWS* (source: Wiki)
None, although it’s clear Denmark’s performance wasn’t good enough for DR, as discussed previously. This would be their final attendance for a while.

*INTERVAL ACT*
The best so far, and so a long edit from the still going Les Haricot Rouges.

*CREDITS*
Original video from @FMR134
60s design elements from Pininterest
Flags: countryflags.com

00:00 Intro
03:13 Song super-cut
25:56 Interval
28:20 Voting intro
30:20 The reorder board 66
43:43 Recap, data & reprise

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