== Detailed voting results ==
== Detailed voting results ==
The voting system was the same one that was implemented the previous year. The winner of the festival was chosen by fourteen national juries located in their respective countries, which were composed of five members each, making a total of seventy jurors. Each juror gave one vote to its favorite entry and could not vote for the entry representing its own country. Each participating broadcaster had a delegate present in the hall to stand in for its jury in case of communication failure. All the countries gave their votes by telephone, except for Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia, who used the stand-in delegates. For the first time, to ensure that there was no vote switching, before the voting segment began each broadcaster showed their audience the jury’s vote from their studios in [[Local insertion|local opt-outs]].
The voting system was the same one that was implemented the previous year. The winner of the festival was chosen by fourteen national juries located in their respective countries, which were composed of five members each, making a total of seventy jurors. Each juror gave one vote to its favorite entry and could not vote for the entry representing its own country. Each participating broadcaster had a delegate present in the hall to stand in for its jury in case of communication failure. All the countries gave their votes by telephone, except for Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia, who used the stand-in delegates. For the first time, to ensure that there was no vote switching, before the voting segment began each broadcaster showed audience vote in [[Local insertion|local opt-outs]].
=== Voting process ===
=== Voting process ===
2nd OTI Song Festival
The OTI Festival 1973 (Portuguese: Segundo Grande Prêmio da Canção Ibero-Americana, Spanish: Segundo Gran Premio de la Canción Iberoamericana) was the second edition of the OTI Festival, held on 10 November 1973 at the Palácio das Artes in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and presented by Walter Forster and Íris Lettieri. It was organised by the Organização da Televisão Ibero-americana (OTI) and host broadcaster TV Itacolomi on behalf of Rede Tupi, who staged the event after winning the 1972 festival for Brazil with the song “Diálogo” by Claudia Regina and Tobías.
Broadcasters from fourteen countries took part, with Mexico competing for the first time and joining the original thirteen participating countries from the previous contest. Ecuador, who was also going to join for the first time, made a late withdrawal. The winner was the song “Qué alegre va María” performed by Imelda Miller representing Mexico. A tie for the first place occurred at the end of the jury voting, with the entry from Mexico tying on points with “El mundo gira por tu amor” by Gabriela de Jesús representing Peru, and winning after applying the tiebreaker procedure.
According to the initial rules of the OTI Festival, the winning broadcaster of the previous edition would host the contest the following year. Rede Tupi, which was the winning broadcaster of the first edition, with the song “Diálogo” performed by Claudia Regina and Tobías representing Brazil was designated as the host broadcaster.
Rede Tupi decided, after forming a committee, that Belo Horizonte was the most suitable city to host the OTI Festival. This decision was made because of the city’s good infrastructure and its readiness for exposition and exhibition purposes. The venue of the festival was the Palácio das Artes, a very modern and vanguardist auditorium which was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and was inaugurated in 1971, two years before the festival took place. The palace, which was one of the biggest concert halls in Brazil and Latin America, had a seating capacity for over 2,000 people, which makes it slightly bigger than the venue of the previous edition in Madrid. Rede Tupi delegated the production of the festival to its local affiliate TV Itacolomi.
Fourteen countries took the stage in the second edition of the OTI Festival. The OTI members, public or private broadcasters from Spain, Portugal, and twelve Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Ibero-America signed up for the contest. Televisa, which represented Mexico and did not participate the previous year, made its debut at the festival selecting its entry in the “National Mexican OTI Festival” which was a lavish and enormously popular national selection that it organised every year from then on. The broadcasters from other countries such as Chile also began creating national events in order to select their entries for the festival. Ecuador, who was also going to participate for the first time, made a late withdrawal.
One performing artist had previously represented the same country in the previous edition: Arturo Quesada had represented Bolivia in 1972. The festival featured two international well-known artist, Camilo Sesto representing Spain, Sergio Esquivel, who was the lyricist of the Mexican entry.
The event was presented by Walter Forster and Íris Lettieri. This was the first time that the festival was hosted in a Portuguese-speaking country, so the festival was mainly presented in Portuguese. The orchestra of the event was the Rede Tupi Symphonic Orchestra. The interval act consisted in a performance by Antônio Carlos e Jocáfi.
The running order of the performances was decided by a draw held a few days before the festival. Except the participating entries coming from Portugal and Brazil, that were performed in Portuguese, all the others were performed in Spanish.
Winner
Detailed voting results
[edit]
The voting system was the same one that was implemented the previous year. The winner of the festival was chosen by fourteen national juries located in their respective countries, which were composed of five members each, making a total of seventy jurors. Each juror gave one vote to its favorite entry and could not vote for the entry representing its own country. Each participating broadcaster had a delegate present in the hall to stand in for its jury in case of communication failure. All the countries gave their votes by telephone, except for Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia, who used the stand-in delegates. For the first time, to ensure that there was no vote switching, before the voting segment began each broadcaster showed its audience from its studios the vote of its jury in local opt-outs.
Tie for first place
Winner
The voting process ended with a tie between the Peruvian and Mexican entries, both with ten votes. According to the rules, in the event of a tie for first place, the stand-in delegates from the countries not affected by the tie would vote to select the winning song. So the delegates of the other twelve countries present in the hall voted for their favorite song between those two.[2] Only the origin of some of the votes was revealed during the recount.[3] Finally, the song “Qué alegre va María” performed by Imelda Miller representing Mexico, defeated the Peruvian entry with only two votes difference.
The festival was broadcast in the 14 participating countries and in Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and the United States, where the corresponding OTI member broadcasters relayed the contest through their networks. It was also reported that it was broadcast in Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, and Sweden, making a total of twenty-five countries. The event was originally broadcast in color, although many of the participating broadcasters were still transmitting in black and white.
It was estimated that this edition reached over 200 million viewers total, which was 100 million more than the previous edition. Mexico, partly thanks to the success of its national final, was again the country where the festival had more viewers to the point that the country was paralysed during the event.[4]
Known details on the broadcasts in each country, including the specific broadcasting stations and commentators are shown in the tables below.
While the festival was being broadcast in Venezuela, the audio signal was lost, and while the technicians were trying to solve the problem, the television station broadcast background music in order to substitute the lack of the original audio signal. This technical problem did not allow Venezuelan viewers to hear the performance of their entry, among others, and for that reason, the national jury was not able to vote and the stand-in delegate present in the hall was used instead.[citation needed]
In regards to the participating songs, “Que alegre va María”, the winning song, was warmly received by the Mexican audience and launched the career of Imelda Miller in Latin America. Another successful song was the Spanish entry “Algo más” by Camilo Sesto which became a smash hit both in Spain and in Latin América.[6] He later became a staple of Spanish music in the 1970s all around Latin America after releasing more hits.
