They should have seen flashing lights of warning in 1975 and 1977 when Turkey and Sweden, respectively, only received points from one country each.
In 1978 Jahn Teigen made his grand entrance and made sure once and for all that it was fully possible to cling on to your zero all the way through. In 1981, Finn Kalvik did the same.
There is no shame in ending on nul points, that must be said. You might have a better average result than other songs that happened to slide into top ten in one or two countries. You had bad luck, that's all.
The responsible people back in 1975 must have felt happy lately as there was no country leaving the final without any points for twelve years, but this year the big zero returned with a vengeance. Not only did we have a double nul-pointer - like in 1983 and 1997 - but this time the host country left the voting without a single point. This has never happened before.
It also puts Austria in some kind of lead if you so wish - together with Norway - after having finished without any points three times since 1975.
It only makes sense to count nul-pointers since 1975, since the voting systems changed a lot before that. Some years it was very easy not to score, some years impossible. So here they are: all that songs that failed to score under the current system. Any personal favourites among this bunch?
1978 Norway – Jahn Teigen / Mil etter mil
1981 Norway – Finn Kalvik / Aldri i livet
1982 Finland – Kojo / Nuku pommiin
1983 Spain – Remedios Amaya / Quién maneja mi barca?
1983 Turkey – Cetin Alp & The Short Wave / Opera
1987 Turkey – Seyyal Taner & Grup Lokomotif / Sarkim sevgi üstüne
1988 Austria – Wilfried / Lisa Mona Lisa
1989 Iceland – Daniel / Það sem enginn sér
1991 Austria – Thomas Forstner / Venedig im regen
1994 Lithuania – Ovidijus Vysniauskas / Lopsine mylimai
1997 Norway – Tor Endresen / San Francisco
1997 Portugal – Celia Lawson / Antes do adeus
1998 Switzerland – Gunvor / Lass’ ihn
2003 United Kingdom – Jemini / Cry Baby
2015 Austria - The Makemakes / I Am Yours
2015 Germany - Ann Sophie / Black Smoke
