Eurovision Song Contest 1992

The 1992 contest took place in Malmö, Sweden, following the country's victory at the 1991 contest with the song "Fångad av en stormvind", performed by Carola. It was the third time that Sweden had hosted the contest, following the 1975 and 1985 events held in Stockholm and Gothenburg respectively. The chosen venue was the Malmö Isstadion, normally used as an indoor ice hockey arena and previously the home stadium of the Malmö Redhawks ice hockey team. Constructed in 1970, the venue had also previously hosted concerts by Frank Sinatra and Julio Iglesias amongst others. With a typical capacity of 5,800 spectators for ice hockey matches, for the contest an audience of around 3,700 was present.

With the Netherlands making a return to the contest after missing the previous year's contest, and Malta continuing to participate following its return to the event in 1991, twenty-three countries in total competed in the 1992 contest – a new contest record. Ahead of the 1991 event the Maltese broadcaster had been told by the contest organisers that they would only be allowed to remain in the competition if another nation dropped out of the event, however after placing sixth in the 1991 contest, the organisers instead decided to raise the maximum number of participating countries to twenty-three to make space for continued Maltese participation. Yugoslavia's entry represented the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for the first and only time, following the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the past year which had been responsible for all previous Yugoslav entries; following the 1992 contest Yugoslavia was excluded from participating and the nation would not return to the contest until 2004, when it competed under its new name Serbia and Montenegro. The 1992 contest was notable in the fact that only two countries which had previously participated in past editions of the event were absent from the contest, namely Monaco and Morocco.

Among the competing entries at this year's contest was the first entry to be performed in a French Creole language, and the first appearance of a song performed in Luxembourgish since 1960.

The 1992 event featured a number of artists who had competed in previous editions: Sigríður Beinteinsdóttir and Grétar Örvarsson, two members of Iceland's entrant Heart 2 Heart, had previously represented the country in 1990 as Stjórnin; Rom Heck, a member of the group Kontinent that represented Luxembourg alongside Marion Welter, had previously competed in the 1989 contest as a member of the group Park Café; Linda Martin made a second contest appearance for Ireland following the 1984 contest; Mia Martini also competed for the second time for Italy, after previously participating in 1977; and the group Wind represented Germany for the third time, following their previous entries in 1985 and 1987. Additionally, Cyprus's Evridiki participated as lead artist after previously performing backing vocals for the Cypriot entries in 1983, 1986 and 1987.

The Eurovision Song Contest 1992 was produced by the Swedish public broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT). Ingvar Ernblad [sv] served as executive producer, Kåge Gimtell [sv] served as producer and director, Göran Arfs served as designer, and Anders Berglund served as musical director leading an assembled orchestra of around 50 musicians. A separate musical director could be nominated by each country to lead the orchestra during their performance, with the host musical director also available to conduct for those countries which did not nominate their own conductor.

Each participating broadcaster submitted one song, which was required to be no longer than three minutes in duration and performed in the language, or one of the languages, of the country which it represented. A maximum of six performers were allowed on stage during each country's performance, and all participants were required to have reached the age of 16 in the year of the contest. Each entry could utilise all or part of the live orchestra and could use instrumental-only backing tracks, however any backing tracks used could only include the sound of instruments featured on stage being mimed by the performers.

Following the confirmation of the twenty-three competing countries, the draw to determine the running order was held on 3 December 1991 and was conducted by Carola.

The results of the 1992 contest were determined through the same scoring system as had first been introduced in 1975: each country awarded twelve points to its favourite entry, followed by ten points to its second favourite, and then awarded points in decreasing value from eight to one for the remaining songs which featured in the country's top ten, with countries unable to vote for their own entry. The points awarded by each country were determined by an assembled jury of sixteen individuals, which was required to be split evenly between members of the public and music professionals, between men and women, and by age. Each jury member voted in secret and awarded between one and ten votes to each participating song, excluding that from their own country and with no abstentions permitted. The votes of each member were collected following the country's performance and then tallied by the non-voting jury chairperson to determine the points to be awarded. In any cases where two or more songs in the top ten received the same number of votes, a show of hands by all jury members was used to determine the final placing.

The stage design for the Malmö contest centred around a large representation of the bow of a Viking ship, flanked on either side by sets of stairs, while a hexagonal design was used for the floor area in front which was painted to resemble the Eurovision network logo. To the left of the stage as seen by the audience sat the orchestra, while to the right stood a large video wall and a smaller stage for use by the presenters to introduce each act and during the voting sequence. Behind the Viking ship the backdrop featured a representation using neon lighting of the span of the Öresund Bridge, the construction of which had yet to begin but which would connect Sweden and Denmark, and thus connecting Sweden with the bulk of the European mainland from 1999.

Rehearsals in the contest venue began on 3 May 1992, focussing on the opening performances and interval act. The participating artists began their rehearsals on 4 May, and each participating delegation was afforded two technical rehearsals in the week of the contest, with countries rehearsing in the order in which they would perform. The first rehearsals, held on 4 and 5 May, saw each country given a 40-minute slot on stage, followed by a press conference. Each delegation was then given a second slot to rehearse on stage, this time for 30 minutes, on 6 and 7 May. Three dress rehearsals were held with all artists, two held in the afternoon and evening of 8 May and one final rehearsal in the afternoon of 9 May. Audiences were present for the latter two dress rehearsals, and the final afternoon dress rehearsal was also recorded for use as a production stand-by. During the contest week the participating delegations were also invited to a welcome reception, which was held in Malmö rådhus [sv].

This year's contest featured a mascot: the "Eurobird", an anthropomorphic bird, featured as a computer animated character during the transition between the competing songs.

The contest took place on 9 May 1992 at 21:00 (CEST) with a duration of 3 hours. The show was presented by the Swedish journalists and television presenters Lydia Capolicchio and Harald Treutiger.

The opening sequence featured a computer-generated animation showing the journey from the previous year's host city Rome to Malmö, including oversized models placed on the European continent representing the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Alps, the Eiffel Tower, and structures in Malmö including Malmö Castle, Kronprinsen and the Hyllie Water Tower. This was followed by performances within the venue by the Malmöflickorna [sv] rhythmic gymnastics troupe, involving ribbon choreography to an instrumental version of "Fångad av en stormvind", and the previous year's winning artist Carola who sang the song "All the Reasons to Live". The interval act, entitled "A Century of Dance", featured David Johnson, Teresa Ibrahim, the Crazy Feat dance troupe and dancers from the Nöjesteatern [sv], in a performance that showed the evolution of dance in Sweden and worldwide over the previous century; among the music pieces featured during the performance was "It Must Have Been Love" originally recorded by the Swedish duo Roxette. The trophy awarded to the winners was presented at the end of the broadcast by Carola.

The winner was Ireland represented by the song "Why Me?", written by Johnny Logan and performed by Linda Martin. This was the fourth time that Ireland had won the contest, following victories in 1970, 1980 and 1987. Having come second at the 1984 contest, Martin became the third artist to have placed both first and second in the contest, alongside Lys Assia and Gigliola Cinquetti, and songwriter Logan, who had already won the contest twice as a performer in 1980 and 1987 – the latter win additionally as the songwriter – became the third individual to record two songwriting wins, alongside Willy van Hemert and Yves Dessca, and became the first, and as of 2023^[update] only, individual to record three wins as either singer or songwriter. The United Kingdom finished in second place for a record-extending thirteenth time, while Malta and Greece recorded their best ever results to date with third- and fifth-place finishes respectively. Conversely host country Sweden recorded one of their worst ever results, finishing 22nd and second-to-last, and Finland picked up their seventh last-place finish. With Ireland, the United Kingdom and Malta taking the top three places, all entries which were performed in English reached the top positions.

Spokespersons

Each country nominated a spokesperson, connected to the contest venue via telephone lines and responsible for announcing, in English or French, the votes for their respective country. Known spokespersons at the 1992 contest are listed below.

•   France – Olivier Minne
•   Ireland – Eileen Dunne
•   Malta – Joanna Drake
•   Sweden – Jan Jingryd [sv]
•   United Kingdom – Colin Berry

Jury voting was used to determine the points awarded by all countries. The announcement of the results from each country was conducted in the order in which they performed, with the spokespersons announcing their country's points in English or French in ascending order. The detailed breakdown of the points awarded by each country is listed in the tables below.

12 points

The below table summarises how the maximum 12 points were awarded from one country to another. The winning country is shown in bold. Italy, Malta and the United Kingdom each received the maximum score of 12 points from four of the voting countries, with Ireland receiving three sets of 12 points, France and Greece receiving two sets of maximum scores each, and Austria, Iceland, Israel and Switzerland each receiving one maximum score.

Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating broadcasters were also able to relay the contest as "passive participants". Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers. The contest was broadcast in 44 countries, including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

Footnotes

References

• Official website