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Eurovision Song Contest Interesting Facts

Even if you’ve never watched it, you’ve most probably heard of it – the Eurovision Song Contest. It all started back in 1956 and the event took place in Switzerland.

Only 7 countries participated in this first Eurovision and they were The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, and Italy. As Austria, Denmark, and the UK missed the entry deadline. However they join in the following year.

The host nation Switzerland won that first Eurovision contest.

Eurovision

There were not many rules in the early days of the contest and this was prevalent in 1957, when the Italian entry lasted 5 minutes and 9 seconds. Since that song the rules changed and songs are now limited to last longer than 3 minutes.

Also, due to the lack of procedures in place if a tie-break occurred, there were actually four winners in 1969 as they all received the same amount of points. So Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, and France were all joint first.

In the following year to protest against that decision, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Portugal refused to take part.

So a new rule was introduced that is if a country’s points are tied, it goes down to the song with the highest votes from the highest number of countries will wins the competition.

Before 1971, there were only solo or duets allowed to compete, but this changed when it was decided that a country could choose to have a group of up to six performers on stage.

In 1974, the United Kingdom gave nul point to ABBA who sang Waterloo. ABBA went on to with the contest at Brighton in 1974 and have become the most successful Swedish pop, despite officially splitting up in 1983.

In 1979 the Eurovision contest was held outside Europe, in Jerusalem.

In 1986, the youngest contestant who won the Eurovision was Belgium’s Sandra Kim, she was just 13 years old, but claimed to be 15. After other countries such as France and Israeli also entered children into the Eurovision, this rule was also changed. After the 1989 Eurovision, contestants had to be older than 16 on the date of the final.

In 1997, televoting was being phased in and although the outcome still exists, it is now determined by a 50:50 combination of both the national jury and televoting to decide on the winner.

Oddly enough, when there is a tie in the national jury votes it is the youngest member who gets the final decision.

Whereby if there’s a tie between the jury’s score and the televoting score, it is the country with the most televotes who wins.

Up to 40 countries can enter and compete in the semi-finals for a place in the final. However, only 26 countries are allowed to move forward into the final competition.

There are actually six countries that do not have to compete in the semi-finals as they have guaranteed places.

These include Norway, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, the UK. The previous year’s winner also gets a free pass to the final.

Australia were invited to participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 in Vienna. Australia is the first country from the Oceania region apart from Morocco in 1980) to take part in this contest.

The country that has won the most Eurovision contests is Ireland, having won the competition on seven occasions.

Johnny Logan won the Eurovision Song Contest three times. He represented and won for Ireland in 1980 and 1987 as a performer with “Hold Me Now” and “What’s Another Year”.

In 1992, he wrote the winning entry “Why Me” for Linda Martin.

On the other end of the scale, Norway have scored “nul points” the most times and has happened four times for Norway!

Norway have come last ten times, and this is the most any country has ever lost.

The Eurovision show is always presented in both English and French. The rules are also written in both these languages too, but if there is a linguistic dispute between the two versions of the rules, the English version wins.

There have been 18 female solo artists winners compared to just 7 men.

The 2020 Eurovision Song Contest 2020 will begin at 20:00 on Tuesday, 12 May and end on Saturday, 16 May, with the Grand Final being held in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands.

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What are the Emmy Awards?

The Emmy Awards is a ceremony held in America in recognition of various sections of television and broadband programmes, which include the Television Academy and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, programmes like daytime, sports, news and documentary pieces.

The founder of the Emmy awards was Syd Cassyd in 1948.

Although the Emmy name derived from a suggestion by Harry Lubcke, a former television engineer and third academy president who wanted to use the name Immy, as this was a term used for the image orthicon tube used in early cameras.

However, it was changed to the more feminine name Emmy as this related to the female statuette, which was the design of a television engineer named Louis McManus, it showed a winged woman holding an atom.  This was to symbolise the status of the uplifting form of art and science in television.

Emmy Award

It now costs around $400 to make an Emmy statuette and takes five-and-a-half hours of labour to create. They are made at R.S. Owens of Chicago.  After the employees have molded the statuette they then carefully hand paint each figure in copper, nickel, silver, and gold.

2018 is the 70th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony, and the annual event normally take place during September.

The first ever Emmy Award ceremony was held on 25th January 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, California and was hosted by Walter O’Keefe.

The first Emmy to be awarded went to Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet Judy Splinters for the Most Outstanding Television Personality.

There are many different categories within the Academy Awards ceremony, which include the Prime time Emmy Awards, the Creative Arts and the Engineering Emmy Awards.

Lorne Michaels has been nominated for the most individual Emmy Awards of all time for his creation of Saturday Night Live, a total of 78 nominations so far and was nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for SNL in 2017.

Since it was broadcast 42 year ago, Saturday Night Live has been nominated 231 nominations and has come away with 52 awards. This makes the show the most nominated one in Emmy history.

However, the person who has collected the most Emmy Awards to date is HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins.  She has a total of 30 Emmy Awards, compared to Lorne Michaels’s 14 awards.

If an Emmy winner wants to take their award statuette home they have to pay the $400 to do so.

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When and why was BAFTA founded?

Although it was not known as the BAFTA academy when it was first founded, the beginnings of the society commenced on 16th April 1947, when an elite group of members from the British film production industry met at a room in the Hyde Park Hotel.

The group of members present that day made David Lean a leading film director the Academy’s Chairman.

The academy all started in order to provide recognition for those who had contributed an outstanding creative piece of work towards the enhancement of British film.

After eleven years later, the British Film Academy decided to merge with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors, duly forming The Society of Film and Television Arts as its replacement.

With David Lean generously donating the royalties from his films “Bridge On The River Kwai” and “Doctor Zhivago” to The Society, this money became an invaluable source of capital for the newly founded society.

In 1976, with the opening of its new headquarters The Society became officially known as The British Academy of Film and Television Arts and BAFTA was born.

Although the BAFTA awards ceremony happens but once a year, the society itself is busy throughout the year with international programme of learning events and initiatives.

These programmes offer an unique access to some of the most inspiring techniques and talents through their various workshops, masterclasses, scholarships, lectures and mentoring schemes.

These initiatives are about connecting with the audiences of all ages and backgrounds across the UK, Los Angeles and New York.

On 12th February 2017, BAFTA awards ceremony which took place at The Royal Albert Hall, London, celebrated it’s 70th Anniversary.

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When and why was the Oscar Academy founded?

On the 16th May 1929, the first ceremony for the Oscars took place at a party held for about 270 people in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

Back in 1927 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), was formed and was a collaborative effort of 36 most elite individuals in the motion picture industry, but was first thought of by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM film studio.

Douglas Fairbanks Sr, a film actor was chosen as the first president of the Academy. The reasons of setting up this society was a way for the establishment to award and honor the talents of the artists within the Motion Picture Industry.

In May 1929, the first Oscar for Best Actor was won by the German tragedian Emil Jannings, for his role in ‘The Last Command’ and ‘The Way of All Flesh’. Whilst the award for Best Actress went to Janet Gaynor, for ‘Seventh Heaven’, ‘Street Angel’ and ‘Sunrise’.

There were two awards in Direction, for Dramatic Picture and Comedic Picture, won by Frank Borzage and Lewis Milestone, respectively. The fist official Best Picture winner, which was a silent film and the only silent film to win the Best Picture award was Wings, and it was directed by William Wellman.

The Academy only started using the nickname ‘Oscar’ for its awards in 1939. The official title for the award is an “Academy Award of Merit”.

On 26th February 2017, the 89th Oscar Awards ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center, Los Angeles, California.

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When was the pantomime invented?

Back in Roman times, a pantomime was a performance by one person, who mimed all the parts in a mythological story.

In 18th century England, a pantomime was still silent, but with a full cast of actors and dancers.   At that time only certain theatres known as  “Theatre Royals” were allowed to present proper plays with words.

So “music houses” such as Sadler’s Wells staged elaborate musical pantomimes with the lovers Harlequin and Columbine and clowns.

It was in the 1840’s that what we now think of as traditional pantomime was established.

A lavish Christmas entertainment for children based loosely on a fairy story, with the Principal Boy  acted by a woman, the Dame by a man and somewhere along the way a transformation scene from earth to fairyland, such as the Prince’s palace to Cinderella’s hovel.

 

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