2009 - Moscow
In 2009, the 54th Eurovision Song Contest was held in Moscow following Russia’s first and only victory at Eurovision with Dima Bilan’s win with his entry “Believe” in Belgrade in 2008. The contest was held at the Olimpiysky Arena with a live audience of 18000 fans and 42 participating countries.
The Moscow contest was surrounded with quite a bit of political controversy that year.
- Prior to the contest, Georgia famously withdrew after the EBU deemed their entry too political. "We Don't Wanna Put In" by Stephane & 3G was seen as a direct rebuke against Russia’s Vladimir Putin which was later confirmed by the band.
- During the first Semi-Final postcard for Armenia’s appearance, a monument located in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region was shown. Azerbaijan lodged a formal complaint, and the monument was subsequently edited out from the postcard on the Final. However, during the results presentation from Armenia, Sirusho read out the votes from a clipboard decorated with a photo of the monument.
- Then there were allegations that Azerbaijan failed to show a voting number for the public to call during Armenia’s performance. Although this was denied, an EBU investigation found that the Azerbaijani broadcaster, Ictimai TV, had indeed blurred out the number for Armenia’s entry and distorted the TV signal when they were performing. This resulted in a fine to the broadcaster and a threat of a three-year expulsion.
- After the contest, a number of Azerbaijanis who had still managed to vote for Armenia, were questioned by the authorities. They were accused of being unpatriotic and a potential security threat. This resulted in a change to Eurovision rules, and broadcasters are no longer allowed to disclose any information which could be used to identify voters.
Politics was however not the only reason to remember 2009.
- This was the only year ever where the Semi-Finals and the Grand Final were hosted by different presenters
- It was the only contest since 2002 (or since) not to have a slogan
- The Jury vote was re-introduced, with the votes now consisting of a combination of 50% televoting results and 50% national jury. This was in response to some broadcasters' continued complaints about politically charged, neighbourly and diaspora voting.
- The massive stage used over a third of the world’s LED screens at the time.
- In the second Semi-Final, both Spain and Albania aired their broadcast with a delay, meaning their results had to be provided by the back-up jury.
- During the Grand Final, Hungary experienced technical difficulties with their televote, and therefore only SMS votes were used for the results. That same night, a technical error with Norway’s telecoms provider rendered both their televotes and SMS votes unusable.
- The winner, Alexander Rybak from Norway, scored a record breaking 387 points outs of a possible 492, singing “Fairytale”. It wasn’t until 2016 that this record was broken when the voting system was changed to award points separately from each of the jury and the televoters.
So overall, despite the controversies that year, the 2009 Contest left a lot to be remembered for, and even resulted in a number of rules charges that has left us with a much improved contest.