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Title: Eurovision 2004-My Top 20 View count: 572 Rating: 4.2 (5 ratings) Description: The Eurovision Song Contest 2004, the 49th in the series, was held in the Abdi İpekçi Arena in Istanbul, Turkey, with the final on 15 May 2004 and the new semi-final three days earlier on 12 May. This was the first occasion in which the contest was held in Turkey. The hosting national broadcaster of the contest was Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). The Ukrainian singer Ruslana Lyzhichko won the contest with the song "Wild Dances", and a score of 280 points. It is notable that this was only Ukraine's second participation in the contest. The contest's new official generic logo was used for the first time this year, with the heart-shaped flag in the centre due to be changed for future contests. The slogan for Istanbul's contest was "Under The Same Sky", which communicated the importance of a united Europe and Turkish integration. The hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest in Istanbul were Korhan Abay and Meltem Cumbul. In the semi-final and the final, Meltem Cumbul warmed up the audience with a sing-a-long of Eurovision classic "Nel blu dipinto di blu (Volare)", originally by Domenico Modugno. Sertab Erener returned to the stage in the final to perform "Everyway That I Can", the 2003 winning song, and one of her new songs called "Leave". Sertab also interviewed contestants in the green room. The Turkish dance ensemble "Fire of Anatolia" performed as the interval act. An official CD was released and, for the first time, the entire contest was released on DVD. A new ABBA video was shown in the semi final, briefly outlining how ABBA started and what the response was of the first record company the approached. It featured small puppets of the band performing snippets of their songs (the voices being the ones of the band) and featured Rik Mayall as the record company manager. This was cut from the Eurovision Song Contest DVD and released separately. References to the video that were made running up to the showing of it were also cut. An hour after the semi-final had been aired, the European Broadcasting Union discovered that there had been problems with the vote counting in Monaco and Croatia. Digame, an affiliate of Deutsche Telekom, who had been responsible for processing all the votes, reported that they had encountered problems with their calculation software, and there was a problem with text message voting in Croatia. Consequently, some votes were not counted in the results announced at the end of the broadcast of the semi-final. When the results were corrected to include these additional votes, they were found not to have affected which countries had qualified for the Final. It is also noted that Serbia and Montenegro finished 1st in the Semi-Final with 263 points and then finished 2nd in the Final with 263 points. This year was also notable as it was the first year that Turkey voted for Cyprus and the second year in a row that Cyprus voted for Turkey. Nevertheless, in a move that angered some Cypriots, when the country presented its votes no map of the island was shown (all other presenters were preceded with their country being highlighted on a map). This was due to Turkey's recognition of the northern half of the island as an independent republic (not recognised by any other state). It is likely Turkey pulled out of showing the map because it would have only highlighted the southern portion of the island, and thus angered the international community. This was also the first year that the scores were only re-read by the hosts in one language. Before 2004 every point was repeated in French and English, but due to 36 countries voting, and more in years to come, in 2004 to save time the hosts only re-read each score in 1 language. This was in the opposite of the original country representative spoke in. In following years the first seven points were already put on the board and only the last few points would be read out to save time. There were technical problems when in a short hiatus halfway through the songs, (used for the advertising break), the hosts tried to contact various parties in Europe. They tried contacting Germany, Spain and Turkey, but in the end they only managed to get a response from Germany. Also during the Romanian postcard introduction, the information for the Romanian entry appeared on the screen, but was quickly taken away. A final hiccup was very minor, when on her way to present Ruslana the trophy, Sertab Erener got her shoe stuck in a speaker grill by the side of the stage and had to be freed by stagehands. However this didn't delay proceedings, and other than the above the show ran smoothly. Just before the Slovenian entry was about to be performed, the Turkish broadcaster accidentally took a commercial break which meant the Slovenian song was not heard by Turkish viewers and consequently, Turkey gave no votes for the song. Tags: esc, eurosong, best, songs, karma, seri, karışık, mix, my, top, 10, studio, versions, Author: yodel1986 |
