Eurovision Song Contest 1972

Usher Hall, Edinburgh – host venue of the 1972 contest.

The 1972 Eurovision Song Contest was hosted by Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland. The Usher Hall, the venue for the 1972 contest, is a concert hall, situated on Lothian Road, in the west end of Edinburgh, Scotland. It has hosted concerts and events since its construction in 1914 and can hold approximately 2,900[2] people in its recently restored auditorium, which is well loved by performers due to its acoustics. The Hall is flanked by The Royal Lyceum Theatre on the right and The Traverse Theatre on the left. Historic Scotland has registered the Hall with Category A listed building status.

The stage design included a screen to introduce and accompany the on stage competing performances, and to show an interval act and voting sequence that were done at Edinburgh Castle. Before each country's performance, a picture of each song's performers along with their names and the song's title were projected on the screen, and during each performance, animated spiral shapes were projected as additional visual effect. The interval act was performed at the outside vast Esplanade of the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle. The jurors were stationed in the safety of the castle, and watched the competing performances at Usher Hall on TV.

Each country had two jury members, one aged between 16 and 25 and one aged between 26 and 55. They each awarded 1 to 5 points for each song, other than the song of their own country. They cast their votes immediately after each song was performed and the votes were then collected and counted. For the public voting sequence after the interval act, the jury members were shown on the stage's screen with each lifting a signboard with the number between 1 and 5 for each song, as a visual verification of the scores they had awarded earlier. The eventual winner, Luxembourg, remained in a strong scoring position throughout the voting.

1972 was the first year that had no ties in the voting. Every year prior to 1972, at least two countries had received the same score.

All countries that participated in the 1971 contest were present this year.

Each national broadcaster sent a commentator to the contest, in order to provide coverage of the event in their own native language. Apart from the participating countries, the contest was transmitted in live for the first time in the continent of Asia, in the countries Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines and Hong Kong. Brazil and Greece also provided live broadcasting. Iceland and Israel broadcast the contest a few days later. The table below shows the order in which the votes were cast along with each country's two jury members, commentator and broadcasting station.

Voting order	Country	Jury members	Commentator	Broadcaster
01	Germany	TBC	Hanns Verres	ARD Deutsches Fernsehen
			Wolf Mittler	Deutschlandfunk/Bayern 2
02	France	TBC	Pierre Tchernia	Première Chaîne ORTF[5]
			TBC	TBC
03	Ireland	TBC	Mike Murphy	RTÉ Television
			Kevin Roche	Radio Éireann
04	Spain	Emma Cohen (under 25) and Luis María Ansón (over 25)[6]	Julio Rico	TVE1
			Miguel de los Santos	Primer Programa RNE
05	United Kingdom	Doreen Samuels (under 25) and Robert Bruce Walker (over 25)[7]	Tom Fleming	BBC1
			Pete Murray	BBC Radio 2[7]
			Terry James	British Forces Radio[8]
06	Norway	Rachel Nord (under 25) and Signe Abusdal (over 25)	Roald Øyen	NRK[9]
			Erik Heyerdahl	NRK P1
07	Portugal	Pedro Sousa Macedo (under 25) and Maria João Aguiar (over 25)[10]	Henrique Mendes	RTP1
			Amadeu Meireles	RDP Antena 1
08	Switzerland	TBC	Theodor Haller	TV DRS
			Georges Hardy	TSR
			Giovanni Bertini	TSI
			Robert Burnier[11]	2 Programme OUC
09	Malta	Mary Rose Mallia (under 25) and Joe Zerafa (over 25)[12]	Norman Hamilton[13]	MTV
			TBC	TBC
10	Finland	Merita Merikoski (under 25) and Åke Granholm (over 25)[14]	Heikki Seppälä	YLE TV1
			Erkki Melakoski	Yleisohjelma
11	Austria	TBC	Ernst Grissemann	FS2
			Hubert Gaisbauer	Hitradio Ö3
12	Italy	TBC	Renato Tagliani	Programma Nazionale
				Secondo Programma Radio
13	Yugoslavia	Vera Zlokovic (under 25) and Veljko Bakasun (over 25)[15]	Milovan Ilić	Televizija Beograd
			Oliver Mlakar	Televizija Zagreb
			Tomaž Terček	Televizija Ljubljana
			TBC	TBC
14	Sweden	Titti Sjöblom (under 25) and Arne Domnérus (over 25)[16]	Bo Billtén[16]	SR TV1
			Björn Bjelfvenstam	SR P3
15	Monaco	TBC	José Sacré	Télé Monte Carlo
				Radio Monte-Carlo
16	Belgium	TBC	Herman Verelst	BRT
			Paule Herreman	RTB
			Nand Baert	BRT Radio 1
			André Hagon	RTB La Première
17	Luxembourg	TBC	Jacques Navadic	Télé-Luxembourg
			Camillo Felgen	Radio Luxembourg
18	Netherlands	Jennifer Baljet (under 25) and Cornelis Wagter (over 25)	Pim Jacobs	Nederland 1
			TBC	TBC

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