Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 1958

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The National Broadcasting Institute [fr; nl] (NIR/INR), whose official name in French was Institut national de radiodiffusion (INR), delegated its participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 1958 to its French-speaking department, which developed the national final format Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne: Demi-Finale Belge in order to select its entry. The competition was held on 19 February 1958 and broadcast on INR.^[1]

After opening a submission period for songs, INR had received about 500 songs by the end of the deadline. Between 4 and 6 February 1958, a professional jury listened to and shortlisted ten entries for the competition. The jury consisted of: Angèle Guller, David Bee, Léon Jongen, Jean Omer, Peter Packay, Jaap Streefkerk, Robert Wasmuth, and René Hénoumont [fr], with Robert Ledent as the chairman of the jury. Aside from the winner, no other information about any of the artists, song titles, or songwriters is known, except for the title of one more song.^[1]

Artist	Song	Songwriter(s)
Fud Leclerc	"Ma petite chatte"	André Dohet
Unknown	"Il y a des rues"	Unknown

The final was held on 19 February 1958 at 20:40 CET and broadcast on INR. The entries were first performed as instrumentals by the orchestra, and then were performed again with the singers. The results were done over two rounds of voting. In the first round, audience members exclusively selected the top five entries to proceed to the second round. In the second round, the winner, "Ma petite chatte" performed by Fud Leclerc, was selected through the votes of a jury panel among 5 superfinalists.^[1]