Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest

This article deals with the history of Switzerland as a participant in the Euro Vision Song Contest.

  • 7.1 Overview

Regularity of participation

Switzerland was in 1956 the first edition of the Euro Vision Song Contest and from then on some regular basis. The Alpine country has never voluntarily surrendered to participate, but had in 1995, expose for bad previous rankings in 1999, 2001 and 2003. Until 1994, Switzerland was along with Germany the only country that had participated in all previously broadcast competitions.

Success in competition

Lys Assia won in 1956 with the song chorus the first contest in Lugano, Switzerland. In 1988, Céline Dion scored the second and so far last victory with Ne pas sans moi partez. Switzerland also came three times on the second, three on the third, five in the fourth and twice in the fifth place. On the other hand, the country also came - the semi-finals included between 2004 and 2010 - six times in the last place, four times with zero points. A particularly weak phase Switzerland had, as it managed not a single post in the front half of the table between 1994 and 2004. From 2007 to 2010, and since 2012 not a single Swiss Post also reached the final. The last top ten placement reached the Estonian band Vanilla Ninja 2005. Overall, 23 of 52 participations achieved a place in the front half of the table, making Switzerland one of the outstandingly successful countries at the competition.

List of posts

Color legend: - Victories. - A tie to the last place. - Contributions finals.

Swiss- German commentators

The Switzerland exudes the Euro Vision Song Contest on the television SRF ( German ), RTS (French) and RSI ( Italian) from.

National preliminary decisions

Some Swiss contributions were selected internally by Swiss television, in the years 1969-1971, 1980, 1994-1997 and 2005-2010 in all other years, a national qualifying round took place, where the selection changed. :

1956-1962

1956 to 1960 were attended by three singers participate in the preliminary round and made a total of 1956 to 1958 eleven songs before; In 1959, before any three songs, 1960 every four. 1961 stelltene singer a total of nine songs before. The number of participants in 1962 is not known.

1963 to 1968 and 1972

Between 1963 and 1968 three more songs were presented at the preliminary round, including two in French, two in German and two in Italian. Until 1966, always attended by five singers, 1967, 1968 and 1972 six.

1972-1979, 1981

In those years, respectively ( between seven and nine ) and different linguistic composition was a " classic " preliminary round held with different number of participants. Meanwhile, it was customary that each singer presented only one song.

1982-1989

1982-1988, there was always the decider nine songs to choose from, including one on Romansh and three each in two of the other languages ​​as well as two in the remaining language. The titles were each elected by language separately under be transmitted on the radio regional preliminaries. The role of host moved annually between the Welsh Switzerland, German-speaking Switzerland and the Italian -speaking Switzerland. 1989, the number of songs was increased to ten.

1990 to 1993, 1998 to 2004

In these years of preliminary round was held again in non-regulated linguistic composition; the number of participants was between six and twelve.

2011-2014

After the Swiss participants was selected in the years 2005 to 2010 directly from the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR, found in 2011 again radiated televised preliminary round called The Big Decision Show. The twelve starting positions were awarded by the Swiss radio station DRS 3 and three television channels of different languages. The German language television station SF got seven places; the first time he used the Internet to seek out his candidates. The Italian- language channels RSI had a place; he was looking for his candidate through a combination of Internet, SMS and jury voting. The French-language station TSR also had a place he occupied by an internal decision. The radio station DRS 3 examined the candidates for its three places on the Internet. The winner of the preliminary decision was in December 2010 by televoting ermittelt.Für the qualifying round for the contest in 2012, the number of participants was increased to 14. RSI and RTS each got a spot more. In turn, the total number was in 2013 reduced to six participants: three contributions came from SF two of RTS and RSI. Although RSI proportionally has the least chances to win, participants from Ticino were already 2012 and 2014, winning the preliminary decision.

Trivia

2013 made ​​it to Switzerland with Takasa in the 2nd semi-final not the final. During her performance Emil Ramsauer played with, he is with his then 95 years the oldest participant at the ESC of all time. In Switzerland, is called the band does not Takasa but Salvation Army. The youngest participant of the band was Sarah Wide 20 years. After the phone vote, it would have easily made ​​it to Switzerland in fifth place in the final, but this was prevented by the juries that put Switzerland at number 16. Probably the unusually high evaluation came through the living in all European countries Salvation Army members in the televoting.

Languages

  • German
  • Italian
  • Romansh

Due to the multilingualism no other country has occurred in so many different languages ​​, such as Switzerland. Before the abolition of the language regime in 1999, the contributions were mostly in German, French or Italian, once ( 1989) in Romansh. 1976 and in recent years there were also English posts.

Overview

Many posts from Switzerland were sung in other languages. In French-speaking contributions, this was often German. English was also very popular here. Bonjour, Bonjour from 1969 was taken up also in Spanish and Portuguese, the returns of 1970 in Spanish. Pas pour moi, the representative from 1986 to also sang in Dutch and Moitié - Moitié from the year after that in Portuguese. Otherwise, all other language versions were in English or in another language.

Commercial success

Many Swiss contributions were not big commercial successes, especially not the two winning titles: Ne pas sans moi partez only came in eleventh place in the singles charts, the chorus reached this not 1956. Overall, only 15 of the 48 posts reached the charts, seven of the top ten. Commercially the most successful was 1977, the contribution of the Swiss Lady Pepe Lienhard band, who was also the only one at the same time, the number one reached the charts. The second most successful was Simone Drexel in 1975 with Mikado, followed by DJ Bobo Vampires Are Alive 2007.

Aligned competitions

Switzerland, in 1956, was chosen to host the first edition of the Euro Vision Song Contest. The competition was held in Lugano. Lohengrin Filipello moderated the program according to the venue completely in Italian. After the second victory of 1988, the Euro Vision Song Contest took place in 1989 for the second time in Switzerland instead. As the venue this time Lausanne was chosen. Presenters were Lolita Morena and Jacques Deschenaux who moderated the competition in English, French, Italian and German. Switzerland has made with this edition of the event on a record, that of the longest opening sequence: Overall, it took 20 minutes for the first contribution was presented.

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