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The Eurovision Song Contest 1987 was the 32nd edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It took place in Brussels, Belgium, following the country's victory at the 1986 contest with the song "J'aime la vie" by Sandra Kim. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster Radio-télévision belge de la Communauté française (RTBF), the contest was held at the Centenary Palace on 9 May 1987 (also Europe Day) and hosted by French-Belgian singer Viktor Lazlo.

Quick Facts Dates, Final ...
Eurovision Song Contest 1987
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Dates
Final9 May 1987
Host
VenueCentenary Palace
Brussels, Belgium
Presenter(s)Viktor Lazlo
Musical directorJo Carlier
DirectorJacques Bourton
EBU scrutineerFrank Naef
Executive producerMichel Gehu
Host broadcasterRadio-télévision belge de la Communauté française (RTBF)
Websiteeurovision.tv/event/brussels-1987 Edit this at Wikidata
Participants
Number of entries22
Debuting countriesNone
Returning countries
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         Competing countries     Countries that participated in the past but not in 1987
Vote
Voting systemEach country awarded 1-12 point(s) to their 10 favourite songs
Winning song Ireland
"Hold Me Now"
1986 Eurovision Song Contest 1988
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Twenty-two countries took part in the contest with Greece and Italy returning to the competition after their absences the previous year. This set the record for the highest number of competing countries up until that point.

The winner was Ireland with the song "Hold Me Now" by Johnny Logan, who had also won the 1980 contest. He became the first performer to have won the Eurovision Song Contest twice.

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Location

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The Centenary Palace of the Brussels Exhibition Centre, host venue of the 1987 contest

The contest took place at the Brussels Exhibition Centre (Brussels Expo) in Brussels, Belgium. These are a set of exhibition halls built from 1930 on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau (Heysel Park) in Laeken (northern part of the City of Brussels) to celebrate the centenary of Belgian Independence. The Centenary Palace (French: Palais du Centenaire, Dutch: Eeuwfeestpaleis), where the main stage was located, is one of the remaining buildings of the Brussels International Exposition of 1935. Currently, it is still being used for trade fairs, as well as concerts, usually for bigger acts and artists.

Host city selection process

Locations of the considered venues: the chosen venue is marked in blue, while the eliminated locations are marked in red.

During the selection process of the host city and venue, a joint committee from the two Belgian broadcasters was created by the EBU. The committee also decided that a potential place for the contest was the Royal Theatre of Antwerp, as both locations proposed by RTBF (the Palais du Centenaire in Brussels and the Patinoire de Coronmeuse [fr] in Liege), but they would have required heavy renovation works to meet the proposed technical specifications for the contest. Nevertheless, RTBF demanded the event to be held in Brussels with the argument that the city symbolized more than the Belgium capital itself, in addition to its federal functions as the capital of the country (but almost all governing bodies of the European Union also located there). On 6 October 1986, seven months ahead of the contest, RTBF surprisingly and one-sidedly announced that the Palais du Centenaire was chosen as the host venue for the Eurovision Song Contest 1987. The Flemish newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, published that BRT proposed instead to host the contest at the Cirque Royal, near the Royal Palace of Brussels, adding that RTBF would be solely in charge of organizing the contest if BRT's counteroffer was not chosen. However, RTBF moved forward alone with its plans and confirmed that the Palais du Centenaire was the official contest's host venue.[1] BRT was offended by the choice of Brussels as the host city, and withdrew from the organization, but kept the duties to choose the host's country contestant.

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Participating countries

Quick Facts – Participation summaries by country ...
Eurovision Song Contest 1987  Participation summaries by country
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The 1987 Eurovision was the biggest contest to date, and it was also the first in which 22 countries competed. Only Malta, Monaco and Morocco failed to compete out of all the countries which had entered the contest in the past. To date, this was the largest number of countries participating in the contest, with the maximum number up until then being 20. As this had never happened, the EBU was forced to review the rules and production calendar after this edition, and fearing that the number would increase again, it was decided that from this edition onwards, the maximum number of participants would also be 22. This was a problematic question over the next six years as new and returning nations indicated an interest in participating, but they could not be accommodated.[2]

More information Country, Broadcaster ...
Eurovision Song Contest 1987 participants[3][4]
Country Broadcaster Artist Song Language Songwriter(s) Conductor
 Austria ORF Gary Lux "Nur noch Gefühl" German
  • Stefanie Werger
  • Kenneth Westmore
Richard Oesterreicher
 Belgium BRT Liliane Saint-Pierre "Soldiers of Love" Dutch
Freddy Sunder
 Cyprus CyBC Alexia "Aspro mavro" (Άσπρο μαύρο) Greek
  • Andreas Papapavlou
  • Maria Papapavlou
Jo Carlier
 Denmark DR Bandjo with Anne-Cathrine Herdorf "En lille melodi" Danish
  • Helge Engelbrecht
  • Jacob Jonia
Henrik Krogsgaard
 Finland YLE Vicky Rosti "Sata salamaa" Finnish
  • Petri Laaksonen
  • Veli-Pekka Lehto
Ossi Runne
 France Antenne 2 Christine Minier "Les mots d'amour n'ont pas de dimanche" French
  • Gérard Curci
  • Marc Minier
Jean-Claude Petit
 Germany BR[a] Wind "Laß die Sonne in dein Herz" German Laszlo Bencker
 Greece ERT Bang "Stop" (Στοπ) Greek
Giorgos Niarchos
 Iceland RÚV Halla Margrét "Hægt og hljótt" Icelandic Valgeir Guðjónsson Hjálmar H. Ragnarsson
 Ireland RTÉ Johnny Logan "Hold Me Now" English Séan Sherrard Noel Kelehan
 Israel IBA Datner and Kushnir "Shir Habatlanim" (שיר הבטלנים) Hebrew Zohar Laskov Kobi Oshrat
 Italy RAI Umberto Tozzi and Raf "Gente di mare" Italian Gianfranco Lombardi
 Luxembourg CLT Plastic Bertrand "Amour amour" French
Alec Mansion
 Netherlands NOS Marcha "Rechtop in de wind" Dutch Peter Koelewijn Rogier van Otterloo
 Norway NRK Kate Gulbrandsen "Mitt liv" Norwegian Terje Fjærn
 Portugal RTP Nevada "Neste barco à vela" Portuguese
  • Alfredo Azinheira
  • Jorge Mendes
Jaime Oliveira
 Spain TVE Patricia Kraus "No estás solo" Spanish
Eduardo Leiva
 Sweden SVT Lotta Engberg "Boogaloo" Swedish
  • Christer Lundh
  • Mikael Wendt
Curt-Eric Holmquist
  Switzerland SRG SSR Carol Rich "Moitié moitié" French Jean-Jacques Egli No conductor
 Turkey TRT Seyyal Taner and Grup Lokomotif "Şarkım Sevgi Üstüne" Turkish Olcayto Ahmet Tuğsuz Garo Mafyan
 United Kingdom BBC Rikki "Only the Light" English Richard Peebles Ronnie Hazlehurst
 Yugoslavia JRT Novi fosili "Ja sam za ples" (Ја сам за плес) Serbo-Croatian
Nikica Kalogjera
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Returning artists

Bold indicates a previous winner.

More information Artist, Country ...
Artist Country Previous year(s)
Gary Lux  Austria 1983 (member of Westend), 1984 (as backing singer for Anita), 1985
Alexia  Cyprus 1981 (member of Island)
Wind  Germany 1985
Johnny Logan  Ireland 1980
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Format

Host broadcaster rule

By 1986, Belgium had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 30 times since making its debut at the first contest in 1956 along 6 other countries. Before Sandra Kim's win, Belgium was the only one of the 7 founding countries to have never won the contest and had only finished in the top five four times (with Tonia's fourth place in 1966, Jean Vallée's second place in 1978, Stella's fourth place in 1982 and Jacques Zegers's fifth place in 1984).

Sandra Kim's Eurovision victory in 1986 occurred amidst a complex political situation in Belgium. The country was undergoing massive constitutional reforms in which the Belgian state was transitioning from a centralized to a federal system. This was due to rising tensions between the two major linguistic regions of Belgium, Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. Both regions had had independent broadcasters since 1960 (BRT in Flanders and RTBF in Wallonia) but had still agreed to jointly host the contest in the event of a Belgian victory. While the triumph of "J'aime la vie" in 1986  an entry sent by French-speaking RTBF  reignited a sense of national union across all Belgian regions, the two regional broadcasters weren't able to overcome their disagreements and joint host the competition.[1] During the production of the event, BRT eventually withdrew from the project and RTBF organised the contest alone as host broadcaster.[6] As a consequence, the host country images in Eurovision 1987 mostly showed footage of Wallonia. BRT still remained in charge of the selection of the Belgian entry for the contest.[7]

Budget

Holding the contest in Belgium caused several legal changes in the country's system and forced the implementation of most of the modern rules and regulations on the monetization of public television. This led to the authorization of advertising, sponsorships and marketing actions in the two public channels in the country. As a consequence, the RTBF was also allowed to sell sponsorship quotas for the event, setting a new precedent for the Eurovision Song Contest.

For RTBF, this decision was a relief as the event was almost entirely funded with private funds. This opened the doors to the commercial potential of the event itself, starting a period of modernization and increased interest for the event.[8] Apart from the latent tensions, after the end of the contest the then-president of the BRT Cas Goossens praised RTBF for their "perfect organization" while at the same time regretting that the two broadcasters weren't able to collaborate. He added that the cost of hosting Eurovision would have been difficult to justify to the Flemish taxpayers.[1]

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Contest overview

More information R/O, Country ...
Results of the Eurovision Song Contest 1987[9]
R/O Country Artist Song Points Place
1  Norway Kate Gulbrandsen "Mitt liv" 65 9
2  Israel Datner and Kushnir "Shir Habatlanim" 73 8
3  Austria Gary Lux "Nur noch Gefühl" 8 20
4  Iceland Halla Margrét "Hægt og hljótt" 28 16
5  Belgium Liliane Saint-Pierre "Soldiers of Love" 56 11
6  Sweden Lotta Engberg "Boogaloo" 50 12
7  Italy Umberto Tozzi and Raf "Gente di mare" 103 3
8  Portugal Nevada "Neste barco à vela" 15 18
9  Spain Patricia Kraus "No estás solo" 10 19
10  Turkey Seyyal Taner and Grup Lokomotif "Şarkım Sevgi Üstüne" 0 22
11  Greece Bang "Stop" 64 10
12  Netherlands Marcha "Rechtop in de wind" 83 5
13  Luxembourg Plastic Bertrand "Amour amour" 4 21
14  United Kingdom Rikki "Only the Light" 47 13
15  France Christine Minier "Les mots d'amour n'ont pas de dimanche" 44 14
16  Germany Wind "Laß die Sonne in dein Herz" 141 2
17  Cyprus Alexia "Aspro mavro" 80 7
18  Finland Vicky Rosti "Sata salamaa" 32 15
19  Denmark Bandjo with Anne-Cathrine Herdorf "En lille melodi" 83 5
20  Ireland Johnny Logan "Hold Me Now" 172 1
21  Yugoslavia Novi fosili "Ja sam za ples" 92 4
22   Switzerland Carol Rich "Moitié moitié" 26 17
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Spokespersons

Each country nominated a spokesperson who was responsible for announcing the votes for their respective country via telephone. Known spokespersons at the 1987 contest are listed below.

  •  Belgium  An Ploegaerts[10]
  •  Iceland  Guðrún Skúladóttir[11]
  •  Sweden  Jan Ellerås [sv][12]
  •  United Kingdom  Colin Berry[4]
  •  Yugoslavia  Ljiljana Tipsarević[13]
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Detailed voting results

More information Total score, Norway ...
Detailed voting results[14][15]
Total score
Norway
Israel
Austria
Iceland
Belgium
Sweden
Italy
Portugal
Spain
Turkey
Greece
Netherlands
Luxembourg
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Cyprus
Finland
Denmark
Ireland
Yugoslavia
Switzerland
Contestants
Norway 6547107344735326
Israel 73215641034108758
Austria 817
Iceland 28444610
Belgium 56523674584534
Sweden 501281372377
Italy 103363511212841121412127
Portugal 15852
Spain 1010
Turkey 0
Greece 64126857571265
Netherlands 8352105738312226810
Luxembourg 422
United Kingdom 4710535331214325
France 4414541125102
Germany 141381012107451610610661012771
Cyprus 806621226536108104
Finland 321034218211
Denmark 83767782118678843
Ireland 172841212121281010121012168125612
Yugoslavia 9212781086612221081
Switzerland 2612573413
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12 points

Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final:

More information N., Contestant ...
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Broadcasts

Each participating broadcaster was required to relay the contest via its networks. Non-participating EBU member 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.[16]

It was reported that 500 million viewers in 25 countries would see the contest.[17] Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.

More information Country, Broadcaster ...
Broadcasters and commentators in participating countries
Country Broadcaster Channel(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Austria ORF FS1 Ernst Grissemann [18][19]
 Belgium BRT TV1 Luc Appermont [20]
BRT 2 [21]
RTBF RTBF1, Radio Deux [fr] [22]
 Cyprus CyBC RIK, A Programma [23][24]
 Denmark DR DR TV Jørgen de Mylius [25]
 Finland YLE TV1, 2-verkko [fi] Erkki Toivanen [26]
 France Antenne 2 Patrick Simpson-Jones [27][28]
 Germany ARD Erstes Deutsches Fernsehen Lotti Ohnesorge [de] and Christoph Deumling [de] [29][30]
 Greece ERT ERT1 [31]
 Iceland RÚV Sjónvarpið, Rás 1 Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir [32]
 Ireland RTÉ RTÉ 1 Marty Whelan [33]
RTÉ FM3 Larry Gogan [34]
 Israel IBA Israeli Television [35]
 Italy RAI Rai Due[b] Rosanna Vaudetti [36]
 Luxembourg CLT RTL Télévision [37]
RTL plus Matthias Krings [de]
 Netherlands NOS Nederland 1 Willem van Beusekom [38]
 Norway NRK NRK Fjernsynet, NRK P2 John Andreassen [39][40]
 Portugal RTP RTP1 [41]
 Spain TVE TVE 2 Beatriz Pécker [es] [42]
 Sweden SVT TV1 Fredrik Belfrage [43]
RR [sv] SR P3 Jacob Dahlin [44]
  Switzerland SRG SSR SRG Sportkette [de][c] Bernard Thurnheer [de] [46][47][45]
SSR Chaîne Sportive [de][d] Serge Moisson [fr]
SSR Canale Sportivo [de][c]
Radio 24 [de] [48]
 Turkey TRT TV1 [49]
 United Kingdom BBC BBC1 Terry Wogan [50]
BBC Radio 2 Ray Moore [51]
 Yugoslavia JRT TV Beograd 1, TV Zagreb 1, TV Novi Sad, TV Sarajevo 1, TV Titograd 1 Ksenija Urličić [13][52][53][54]
TV Koper-Capodistria [55]
TV Ljubljana 1 [sl] Vesna Pfeifer
TV Prishtina [sr; sq] [52]
TV Skopje 1
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More information Country, Broadcaster ...
Broadcasters and commentators in non-participating countries
Country Broadcaster Channel(s) Commentator(s) Ref(s)
 Australia SBS SBS TV[e] [56]
 Czechoslovakia ČST ČST2[f] [57]
 Estonian SSR ETV[g] [58]
 Faroe Islands SvF [60]
 Greenland KNR KNR[h] [61]
 Hungary MTV MTV2[i] István Vágó [62]
 Jordan JRTV JTV2 [63]
 Poland TP TP1[j] [64]
 South Korea KBS 1TV[k] [65]
2FM[l] [66]
 Soviet Union CT USSR Programme One[g] [59]
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See also

Notes

  1. On behalf of the German public broadcasting consortium ARD[5]
  2. Deferred broadcast at 22:45 CEST (20:45 UTC)[36]
  3. Broadcast through a second audio programme on TSR[45]
  4. Broadcast through a second audio programme on TV DRS[45]
  5. Delayed broadcast on 11 May 1987 at 20:30 AEST (10:30 UTC)[56]
  6. Delayed broadcast on 6 June 1987 at 16:55 CEST (15:55 UTC)[57]
  7. Delayed broadcast on 4 June 1987 at 23:25 MSD (19:25 UTC)[58][59]
  8. Delayed broadcast on 23 May 1987 at 20:05 (WGST)[61]
  9. Deferred broadcast on 10 May at 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC)[62]
  10. Delayed broadcast on 23 May 1987 at 20:00 CEST (18:00 UTC)[64]
  11. Delayed broadcast on 29 May 1987 at 21:50 (KST)[65]
  12. Delayed broadcast on 16 May 1987 at 11:00 (KST)[66]

References

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