Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 1957

Belgium was represented in the Eurovision Song Contest 1957, on 3 March 1957, by Bobbejaan Schoepen with the song "Straatdeuntje", written by Harry Frekin and Eric Franssen and performed in Dutch. The song was chosen during a national final with Schoepen performing all entries.

De T.V Maakt Muziek
De T.V. Maakt Muziek was a show produced by NIR which had been aired since 1955. The premise of the show was that it was roughly 40 minutes of just music videos and performances with hardly any intervals. On 19 February 1957 at 20:45 CET, an episode of the show was aired which featured the NIR's candidate songs for Eurovision 1957. The show was hosted at Studio 6 at the Flageyplein in Brussels. It was also broadcast in the Netherlands on NTS. All three competing songs were performed by Bobbejaan Schoepen, and "Straatdeuntje" was selected as the winning song by an "expert" jury.

Competing entries
In early 1957, NIR asked Bobbejaan Schoepen to represent them at Eurovision and, at the same time, asked seven composers to write songs for Schoepen. Since Bobbejaan Schoepen was in the US at the time, NIR decided to further reduce the number of songs. The seven songs were performed by other artists, and a jury internally selected three for Eurovision 1957. The singers of those three songs are unknown, but the singers of the other four are known as they were performed by their artists during the episode of De T.V Maakt Muziek. It is known that one of the songs was performed by Terry Lester, but not which.

Final


The final was held on 19 February 1957. "Straatdeuntje" was selected by the jury as the winning song and would become Belgium's third entry in the Eurovision Song Contest (as every country had two songs in the 1956 competition) and the first song submitted by the Flemish broadcaster as well as the first Belgian entry performed in Dutch.

Voting was done by a 10-member jury panel who each made rankings of the three songs and the ranking positions were summed. The jury panel which voted in the final consisted of: Marcel Put (composer; jury chairperson), Nic Bal (journalist), Francis Bay (conductor), Bob Boon (TV presenter and producer), Léonce Gras (NIR's musical director), Jacques Kruger (musical manager), Albert Rollewagen (music publisher), Paul Van Dessel (NIR's TV director), Gert Mertens, and Renaat Verbruggen (baritone singer).

The results and winner of the national final weren't revealed until after the show.

At Eurovision
At the Eurovision Song Contest in Frankfurt, the Belgian entry was the first of the night preceding. Reflecting the song title, the stage was showing the picture of a street in the background. Schoepen delivered, as usual in these days, a simple performance which was remarkable because of the large whistling part in his song. At the close of voting, Belgium had received five points in total; the country finished shared eight among the ten participants. The Belgian jury gave half of its points, five, to the winning country, the Netherlands.

Voting
Every country had a jury of ten people. Every jury member could give one point to his or her favourite song. Among the jury members was Francis Bay, who would go on to conduct the Belgian entry at Eurovision in nine future edition of the contest.