Kross-European Song Kontest (KESK)

The Kross-European Song Contest - KESC for short - had begun development in March 1919 following the end of the First World War. by September that year, a new company named Kross Kompany was set up and was set to hold the first contest in Summer 1920. The first contest was held in Zaanstad, the Netherlands and had five participating countries.

Executive producers are in charge of running the contests and are practically the CEO. They are assisted by their assistant directors who often are also executive at other points of their lives. Liam Bekaert, the person the award was named after, directed 19 contests before he died in the second World War, either as executive or assistant. Kiana Ratz has directed the most contests, at 30, as of 1983.

Last Places (Semi Finals and Finals)
Contests that weren't held: 1930, 1931, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1971

Executive Producers
After the 1987 contest, each assistant would be from the host country to help internal issues. Before, it had been appointed by the reference group of KESC or the executive producer themselves.

Each country's hosting and wins
When you win, you get the opportunity to host the next contest. Usually this is taken but there have been a few exceptions where the winner cannot host.

Best and Worst Results
Even if one country has more top 5 entries, if they have less wins, they are lower than someone who has more wins but less top 5 appearances. Germany includes both West German and East German entries.

Controversies

 * in 1928, all of the scores and results 4th place and below were lost due to human error when making the scoreboard and press releases. On 15th May 1934 (6 years later), a meeting was held to solve this gap in statistics by taking the predictions of the show and using them as the official results (by keeping Italy, United Kingdom and Austria as the top 3 as shown in the original show).
 * in 1938, Austria was forced to withdraw after Germany annexed it into it's own country. This became a problem as Austria won the previous edition and was part of the automatic qualifiers. France ended up hosting instead and Switzerland took their place in the final due to their long time good places.
 * in 1941, The Axis held an unofficial contest was held which is usually not recognised.