45 years of struggle

The rush to publish Eurovision books started seriously in January in Finland with the release of Asko Murtomäki's history of Finnish Eurovision. 'Finland 12 points!' takes on the massive task of covering 52 years of Eurovision history for the first time in Finnish. The book has a certain amount of official authority about it, as the writer has used the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE's archives as his source as well as for most of the photos used in the book. The book's design is also by dog design, the agency that was later also selected to work on the visual aspects of the Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki in May 2007.

The book takes a Finnish point of view and the ESC years with no Finnish participation are only given a page each. From 1961 Mr. Murtomäki first gives thorough information on how the Finnish Eurovision song was selected in the national finals. He gives a lot of space for contemporary press reports, especially as no audio or video recordings of the early years survive. He then follows the year up with a report from the international final and then adds media reactions to how Finland did each year.

It all starts very enthusiastically in 1960, when Finland was connected to the Eurovision network and the then music editor Aarno Walli could convince his YLE bosses to transmit the contest even in Finnish television. It was a hit with the viewers who immediately started demanding Finland also took part as their three nearest Nordic neighbours already did. So from the very first beginning the general public took control of the show, just to be frustrated year after year after Finland failed to get any remarkable success. The Nordic aspect is also well observed in the book already in the 60s the Nordic broadcasters had their own Nordvision network, and the best songs from each of the national selections were shown on the neighbouring countries' TV's.

The book charts quite well the desperation at YLE to find the right formula to select a song. Never did it even seem to have been discussed to select the song or even the artist internally, as some countries have done occasionally even to date. Every year there was some sort of selection and application process, only to be changed again for another system in a year or two. 'Finland 12 points!' lets YLE off quite easily, as it could be felt that the lack of continuity and settled selection process kept the viewing public confused and maybe some readers will feel the broadcaster would deserve some harsher criticism in years of changing rules year after year. The lack of long term planning obviously led to the disastrous slump in popularity of the contest in the general public's eye by the 1990's, and only a few minor successes that were more just through luck than a vision to win the contest from YLE's part.

It becomes clear from the book that it took until early 2000's for the corporation to create a long term plan to develop the national contest into the successful formula that eventually resulted in Lordi's victory in Athens in 2006. The current team in charge of the contest in Finland, of which the author also is a member of, decided to give the power back to the public after years of expert juries selecting songs that the public did not stand behind. There are tales of worry for letting the audience decide, as they were not seen capable of choosing a song worthy of international representation. Expert juries were used most years, some years even a two-tier system where international experts were left to make the final decision. Very rarely did the juries seem to be able to agree with the taste of the viewing public and the selection process was subject to scandals year after year. Only when the Finnish song was selected by the viewers there was no immediate backlash of the wrong song having been selected in the press on the days after the contest.

The most frustrating process seems to have been a method where the public got to vote first for their favourites and then the experts decided amongst the most popular amongst them, and these two methods never reached the same result. Especially this was obvious in 1965 and 1981, when the public had had clear favourites amongst the candidates (some of the actual voting results are now published for the first time) just to see the experts snub their favourites in favour of something artistically worthy, but not generally popular.

This well researched book understandably has a very matter-of-fact approach to Eurovision as it also reproduces all available voting results in the extensive charts, with the most obvious humour comes in the form of contemporary anecdotes. It clearly holds up in comparison to the most obvious recent books in English about Eurovision, that have been rather thin on substance in favour of visual appearance, and maybe the only Eurovision history book to match 'Finland 12 points!' meticulous approach is the German publication from 2002, 'Ein Lied kann eine Brucke 'sein by Jan Feddersen, also very similar in its basic structure. This book seems an easy enough read for someone who has not followed the contest too closely, but also gives the most dedicated fan of the contest some new information in the form of the actual voting results in the Finnish pre-selections and as well as valuable eyewitness accounts of the contests of the past. Also the pictures used are mostly rarely seen and add to the value of this book. The book has an extensive index on all Finnish Eurovision songs, on all songwriters and artists and also on all jury members.

Asko Murtomäki

Asko Murtomäki sets the standard for the several mass market books to be published in Finnish this spring on Eurovision, some translated (and updated) editions of international releases, and should easily be the Eurovision history book of choice for the Finnish fan of any age. The book is in Finnish only.

Asko Murtomäki

Finland 12 points!

Suomen Euroviisut

Teos, Helsinki 2007.

255 pages.