EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2006

The 'Eurovision Song Contest 2006' was the fifty-first Eurovision Song Contest, held at the Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens, Greece on the 18 May 2006 (for the semi-final) and 20 May 2006 (for the final). The hosting national broadcaster of the contest was ERT. The Finnish band Lordi won the contest with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" with a record 292 points. "Hard Rock Hallelujah" was the first ever hard rock song to win the contest (Eurovision is normally associated with softer pop music and schlager). This was also Finland's first victory in Eurovision after 40 years of participation.
The official logo of the contest remained the same from 2004 and 2005 with the country's flag in the heart being changed. The 2006 sub-logo created by the design company Karamela for Greek television was apparently based on the Phaistos Disc which is a popular symbol of ancient Greece. According to ERT, it was "inspired by the wind and the sea, the golden sunlight and the glow of the sand". Following Istanbul's "Under The Same Sky" and Kiev's "Awakening", the slogan for the 2006 show was "Feel The Rhythm". This theme was also the basis for the postcards for the 2006 show, which emphasized Greece's historical significance as well as being a major modern tourist destination.
The hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens were popular Greek singer Sakis Rouvas (the Greek representative at Eurovision in 2004) and the Greek-American television presenter and actress, Maria Menounos. In the semi-final, both the hosts sang Katrina and the Waves' contest-winning "Love Shine A Light". For one of the intervals, Sakis Rouvas sang an English version of his Greek hit "S' exo Erotefti" called "I'm in love with you". Helena Paparizou, who performed the winning song in Kiev, returned to the Eurovision stage in Athens. Following the examples of Sertab Erener and Ruslana in the last two years, Helena Paparizou sang in the interval acts for the final. She sang "My Number One" and "Mambo!". Greek dancers were also present in the interval acts, as well as other Greek elements. An official CD and DVD was released and a new introduction was an official fan book released from this year, and every year to come with detailed information of every country.
To save time in the final, the voting time was for ten minutes long and the voting process was changed: points 1-7 were shown immediately on a live scoreboard. The spokespersons only announced the countries scoring 8, 10 and 12 points. Despite this being intended to speed proceedings up, there were still problems during voting - EBU imaging over-rode Maria Menounos during a segment in the voting interval and some scoreboards were slow to load. The Netherlands' spokesperson Paul de Leeuw also caused problems, giving his mobile number to presenter Rouvas during the Dutch results, and slowing down proceedings, also by announcing the first seven points. Constantinos Christoforou (who also represented Cyprus in 1996, 2002 and 2005) had to be cut-off for taking too long to give the twelve points from the Cypriot televote. During Cyprus reading, the telecast displayed Switzerland by mistake. This voting process has been criticized because suspense was lost by only reading three votes instead of ten.
The 2006 contest also saw the 1,000th song to be performed in the contest, when "Every Song Is A Cry For Love" by Ireland's Brian Kennedy was first sung in the semi-final. Armenia also entered for the first time in the contest. A number of fans were also shocked by the success of the Lithuanian entry - LT United singing 'We Are The Winners' and the failure of the Belgian entry - Je T'Adore by Kate Ryan to qualify from the Semi-Final.

Lordi performing Hard Rock Hallelujah for Finland at Eurovision 2006.

The hosts Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas

Contents

Individual entries

Final 2006-05-20

Semi-Final 2006-05-18

Score sheet

Other countries

Ratings

Trivia and Records

Commentators

Spokespersons

References

Map

External links

Individual entries

Final 2006-05-20

''Countries in bold automatically qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 Final.''

Draw	Country	Language	Artist	Song	Translation	Place	Points
01		English	Six4One	If We All Give A Little	-	17	30
02		English, Spanish	Arsenium feat. Natalia Gordienko & Connect-R	Loca	Crazy	20	22
03		English, Hebrew	Eddie Butler	Together We Are One	-	23	4
04		English	Cosmos	I Hear Your Heart	-	16	30
05		Norwegian	Christine Guldbrandsen	Alvedansen	The Elf Dance	14	36
06	''	Spanish	Las Ketchup	Bloody Mary	-	21	18
07		English	Fabrizio Faniello	I Do	-	24	1
08	''	English	Texas Lightning	No No Never	-	15	36
09		English	Sidsel Ben Semmane	Twist of Love	-	18	26
10	''	English	Dima Bilan	Never Let You Go	-	2	248
11	FYR Macedonia	English, Macedonian	Elena Risteska	Ninanajna	-	12	56
12	''	English, Italian	Mihai Trăistariu	Tornerò	I'll Return	4	172
13	''	Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian	Hari Mata Hari	Lejla	Layla	3	229
14	''	English, French	LT United	We Are The Winners	-	6	162
15	''	English	Daz Sampson	Teenage Life	-	19	25
16	''	English	Anna Vissi	Everything	-	9	128
'17'	''	'English'	'Lordi'	'Hard Rock Hallelujah'		' 1'	'292'
18	''	English	Tina Karol	Show Me Your Love	-	7	145
19	''	French	Virginie Pouchain	Il était temps	The Time Has Come	22	5
20		Croatian	Severina	Moja štikla	My Stiletto	13	56
21	''	English	Brian Kennedy	Every Song Is a Cry For Love	-	10	93
22	''	English	Carola	Invincible	-	5	170
23		Turkish, English	Sibel Tüzün	Süper Star	Superstar	11	91
24	''	English	André	Without Your Love	-	8	129

Semi-Final 2006-05-18

''Shaded countries qualified for the Eurovision Final''

Draw	Country	Language	Artist	Song	Translation	Place	Points
'01'	''	'English'	'André'	'Without Your Love'	-	'6'	'150'
02		English	Mariana Popova	Let Me Cry	-	17	36
03		English	Anžej Dežan	Mr Nobody	-	16	49
04		Catalan	Jenny	Sense tu	Without You	23	8
05		English	Polina Smolova	Mum	-	22	10
06		Albanian	Luiz Ejlli	Zjarr e ftohtë	Fire And Cold	14	58
07		English	Kate Ryan	Je t'adore	I Adore You	12	69
'08'	''	'English'	'Brian Kennedy'	'Every Song Is A Cry For Love'	-	'9'	'79'
09		English	Annet Artani	Why Angels Cry	-	15	57
10		French, Tahitian	Séverine Ferrer	La coco-dance	The Coco Dance	21	14
'11'	' FYR Macedonia '	'English, Macedonian'	'Elena Risteska'	'Ninanajna'	-	'10'	'76'
12		English, Polish, German, Russian, Spanish	Ich Troje feat. Real McCoy	Follow My Heart	-	11	70
'13'	''	'English'	'Dima Bilan'	'Never Let You Go'	-	'3'	'217'
'14'	''	'Turkish'	'Sibel Tüzün'	'Süper star'	'Superstar'	'8'	'91'
'15'	''	'English'	'Tina Karol'	'Show Me Your Love'	-	'7'	'146'
'16'	''	'English'	'Lordi'	'Hard Rock Hallelujah'	-	'1'	'292'
17		English, imaginary	Treble	Amambanda	-	20	22
'18'	''	' English', 'French'	'LT United'	'We Are The Winners'	'Mes Nugalétojai'	' 5'	'163'
19		English, Portuguese	Nonstop	Coisas de nada	Meaningless Things	19	26
'20'	''	'English'	'Carola'	'Invincible'	-	'4'	'214'
21		English	Sandra	Through My Window	-	18	28
'22'	''	'Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian'	'Hari Mata Hari'	'Lejla'	-	'2''	'267'
23		English	Silvia Night	Congratulations	-	13	62

Score sheet

Televoting was used in all nations except Monaco & Albania, who didn't hold a televote due to the chances of the threshold number of votes needed to validify the televoting results being reached in Monaco being very low and some problems occurred in the Albanian televoting. In the semi final, Andorra joined Monaco & Albania in using the jury due to insufficient televoting numbers. If you would like to see the scoreboard for the semi-final click here... [1]

		Televoting Results
		Switzerland	Moldova	Israel	Latvia	Norway	Spain	Malta	Germany	Denmark	Russia	Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia	Romania	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Lithuania	United Kingdom	Greece	Finland	Ukraine	France	Croatia	Ireland	Sweden	Turkey	Armenia	Slovenia	Andorra	Portugal	Belgium	Serbia and Montenegro	Estonia	Cyprus	Netherlands	Poland	Belarus	Iceland	Monaco	Albania	Bulgaria
Contestants	Switzerland		0	4	0	0	0	'12'	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	6	0	0
	Moldova	0		0	0	0	2	0	0	0	3	0	'12'	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Israel	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
	Latvia	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	8	2	0	0	4	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	8	0	0
	Norway	0	3	0	6		0	0	0	1	7	0	0	0	0	0	2	5	3	0	0	0	2	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	4	1	0	0
	Spain	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	'12'	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	0
	Malta	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0
	Germany	7	0	0	3	1	5	0		3	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	5	0
	Denmark	0	0	0	0	6	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	8	0	0	0
	Russia	0	10	'12'	'12'	3	7	5	6	2		8	8	6	'12'	1	8	'12'	'12'	2	7	5	7	5	'12'	4	6	7	3	5	10	8	2	10	'12'	5	0	4	10
	F.Y.R Macedonia	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	8	0	0	6	7	6	0	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	6
	Romania	1	'12'	10	2	4	'12'	10	5	6	4	2		2	1	6	7	6	1	7	5	6	6	3	4	5	3	10	2	4	4	10	0	3	3	2	0	2	2
	Bosnia-Herzegovina	'12'	5	2	0	8	1	0	7	8	6	'12'	7		4	0	6	10	10	6	'12'	2	10	'12'	5	'12'	0	2	6	'12'	0	2	8	4	4	3	'12'	'12'	7
	Lithuania	0	4	3	10	5	4	1	1	7	5	3	0	0		10	4	8	5	0	6	'12'	3	0	0	3	7	4	4	3	8	4	6	8	6	10	7	0	1
	United Kingdom	0	0	0	1	2	0	3	0	4	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	1	8	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	2	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
	Greece	5	1	0	0	0	0	8	8	0	0	7	10	1	3	7		1	0	5	0	0	4	4	8	0	1	0	10	6	0	'12'	5	0	2	0	0	8	'12'
	Finland	8	6	7	8	'12'	10	7	10	'12'	8	6	4	7	10	'12'	'12'		7	8	10	10	'12'	7	0	8	10	6	8	7	'12'	5	7	'12'	7	'12'	0	0	5
	Ukraine	0	8	6	5	0	3	2	0	0	10	5	3	5	7	0	5	2		0	4	1	1	8	10	2	5	'12'	0	2	5	6	1	6	10	6	2	0	3
	France	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	0	0
	Croatia	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	10	0	'12'	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	0	2	0	10	0	0	0	10	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	0
	Ireland	3	0	0	4	7	0	4	4	5	0	0	2	0	6	8	0	4	2	1	2		5	0	3	1	4	5	0	0	6	0	4	2	0	1	10	0	0
	Sweden	2	2	5	7	10	6	6	0	10	2	1	5	3	5	4	0	7	6	3	3	7		0	6	7	8	8	5	1	7	0	0	7	5	7	5	10	0
	Turkey	10	0	1	0	0	0	0	'12'	0	0	4	6	10	0	3	3	0	0	'12'	0	0	0		0	0	0	0	7	0	0	0	'12'	0	0	0	0	7	4
	Armenia	0	7	8	0	0	8	0	3	0	'12'	0	1	0	2	0	10	0	8	10	0	0	0	10		0	0	0	'12'	0	0	7	10	5	8	0	0	0	8
The table is ordered by appearance in the final, then by pre-determined voting order.

Other countries

★ On June 18, 2005, Austrian newspaper ''Kurier'' reported that the Austrian broadcaster ORF would not be taking part in the 2006 contest.

★ On October 5, 2005 the managing director of Georgia Television & Radio Broadcasting stated that Georgia would not enter the 2006 contest.

★ On October 6, 2005 Česká televize announced that the Czech Republic would not participate.

★ On December 9, 2005 Hungarian broadcaster Magyar TV announced that Hungary would not participate for financial reasons.

★ Italy has not taken part in the Contest since 1997.
Serbia and Montenegro withdrew from the contest due to a scandal in the selection process, which has caused tensions between the Serbian broadcaster, RTS, and the Montenegrin broadcaster, RTCG. Serbia and Montenegro did retain voting rights for the contest.
Serbia and Montenegro's withdrawal left a vacancy in the final. In the delegations meeting on March 20, it was decided that Croatia, who finished 11th in the 2005 Contest, would fill the empty spot.
The other EBU countries that did not participate were Slovakia, Luxembourg, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya and San Marino. Liechtenstein was not able to participate as it does not have a national television or radio service and therefore is not a member of the EBU.

Ratings

After the Contest, EBU officials that the overall ratings for the Semi-Final were 35% higher than in 2005, and for the Final had risen by 28%.
In France, average market shares reached 30.3%, up by 8% over the 2005 figure. Other countries that showed a rise in average market shares included Germany with 38% (up from 29%), United Kingdom with 37.5% (up from 36%), Spain with 36% (up from 35%), Ireland with 58% (up from 35%) and Sweden, which reached over 80% compared to 57% the year previously.
Voting revenues had also risen from the Kiev Contest, and the official Eurovision website, www.eurovision.tv, reported visits from over 200 countries and over 98 million page views, compared with 85 million in 2005.

Trivia and Records

''From the Final''

★ Finland waited 44 years since their debut in 1961 to achieve their first victory. The Finns have been waiting since 1977 for their fourth set of 12 points; this year they finally achieved one again - in fact, they received eight.

★ Sweden's Carola obtained 170 points without getting any 12-pointers and reached 5th place.

★ Though Turkey was the fourth country with the most 12s (received from France, Germany and Netherlands), the entry by Sibel Tüzün only reached 11th place with 91 points.

★ Lithuania waited 12 years to receive their first 12 points. This was finally realised by votes from Ireland.

★ Runner-up Russia and 4th placed Romania were voted for by 35 countries, more than winner Finland, who received votes from 34 countries.

★ The United Kingdom placed 19th, receiving points from 10 countries, while FYR Macedonia (12th), Croatia (13th) and Denmark (18th) were voted for by 9, 8 and only 5 countries respectively.

★ As at the conclusion of the 2006 contest, Greece holds the record for the most successful run in the Eurovision Song Contest since its shake-up in 2004. It is the only country that has not yet been relegated to the semi-final (excluding the Big 4), after having attained places in the top 10 since then (third in 2004, first in 2005, ninth in 2006).
==Non-participating regions where the contest was broadcast
; 'Australia' : Although Australia is not itself eligible to enter, it broadcast the event on SBS. As is the case each year, it did not however broadcast it live due to the difference in Australian time zones. The semi-final was screened on Friday and the final on the annual Sunday immediately after the final.Australia airs the United Kingdom's broadcast, including commentary from