Eurovision Song Contest 1968

Royal Albert Hall, London - host venue of the 1968 contest.

The contest was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Royal Albert Hall is known for hosting the world's leading artists from several performance genres, sports, award ceremonies, the annual summer Proms concerts and other events since its opening in 1871, and has become one of the United Kingdom's most treasured and distinctive buildings.

1968 was the first time that the Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast in colour. The countries that broadcast it in colour were France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, although in the UK it was broadcast as an encore presentation in colour on BBC Two the next day. Also all of Eastern Europe and Tunisia broadcast the contest. Katie Boyle hosted the contest for a third time.[1]

In May 2008, a documentary by Spanish film-maker Montse Fernández Villa, 1968. Yo viví el mayo español, centred on the effects of May 1968 in Francoist Spain,[2] and alleged that the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest was rigged by the Spanish caudillo Francisco Franco, who would have sent state television officials across Europe offering cash and promising to buy television series and contract unknown artists.[3] The allegation was based on a testimony by journalist José María Íñigo, a TVE employee at the time, who claimed the rigging was common knowledge and suggested that Spanish record label representatives offered to release albums by Bulgarian and Czech artists (neither Bulgaria nor Czechoslovakia were members of the European Broadcasting Union at the time, though in the 1968 Contest, Austria was represented by Karel Gott, who was from Czechoslovakia.).[4]

The documentary claimed that the contest should in fact have been won by the United Kingdom's entry – "Congratulations" performed by Cliff Richard – which finished second by one vote.[5] Massiel, the performer of the winning entry, was outraged by the allegations, and claimed that if there had been fixes, "other singers, who were more keen on Francoist Spain, would have benefited". José María Iñigo, author of the statement in the documentary, personally apologized to Massiel and said that he had repeated a widespread rumour. Both Massiel and Iñigo accused television channel La Sexta, broadcaster of the documentary, of manufacturing the scandal.[6]

All countries that participated in 1967 also participated in 1968.[1]

Due to a misunderstanding by the hostess, Katie Boyle, Switzerland were erroneously awarded 3 points by Yugoslavia, instead of 2. The scrutineer asked for the Yugoslav votes from TV Skopje to be announced a second time.

The table below shows the order in which votes were cast during the 1968 contest along with the spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country. Each national broadcaster also sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language. Details of the commentators and the broadcasting station for which they represented are also included in the table below.[1]

Voting order	Country	Spokespersons	Commentator	Broadcaster
01	Portugal	Maria Manuela Furtado	Fialho Gouveia	RTP
02	Netherlands	Warry van Kampen[9]	Elles Berger	Nederland 1[10]
03	Belgium	André Hagon	Paule Herreman	RTB
			Herman Verelst	BRT
04	Austria	Walter Richard Langer	Willy Kralik	ORF
05	Luxembourg	TBC	Jacques Navadic	Télé-Luxembourg
06	Switzerland	Alexandre Burger	Theodor Haller	TV DRS
			Georges Hardy	TSR
			Giovanni Bertini	TSI
07	Monaco	TBC	Pierre Tchernia	Télé Monte Carlo
08	Sweden	Edvard Matz[11]	Christina Hansegård[12]	Sveriges Radio-TV
09	Finland	Poppe Berg[13]	Aarno Walli[14]	TV-ohjelma 1
10	France	Jean-Claude Massoulier[15]	Pierre Tchernia[16]	Deuxième Chaîne ORTF
11	Italy	Mike Bongiorno	Renato Tagliani	Secondo Programma
12	United Kingdom	Michael Aspel	No commentator	BBC1
			Pete Murray[17]	BBC Radio 1
13	Norway	Sverre Christophersen[18]	Roald Øyen	NRK[19]
14	Ireland	Gay Byrne	Brendan O'Reilly	RTÉ Television
			Kevin Roche	Radio Éireann
15	Spain	Ramón Rivera	Federico Gallo	TVE1
			José María Íñigo	Cadena SER[20]
16	Germany	Hans-Otto Grünefeldt	Hans-Joachim Rauschenbach	ARD Deutsches Fernsehen
17	Yugoslavia	Snežana Lipkovska-Hadžinaumova	Miloje Orlović	Televizija Beograd
			Mladen Delić	Televizija Zagreb
			Tomaž Terček	Televizija Ljubljana

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