First time that the traditional "postcards", little short videos before each song to make room for all the European commentators in different countries to introduce the songs and singers to each of their local audiences, were used. They were introduced to make the show longer after the number of participating countries was reduced to only 12, the lowest number since 1959, after four countries decided not to participate to protest against the four-way tie the previous year. The countries that retired were Sweden, Norway, Finland and Portugal. Austria hadn't participated in 1969 and stayed one more year out in protest too. Portugal joined the Nordic countries in the retirement after they had already selected a song for the competition.
As the previous year there had been four winners, Spain, United Kingdom, The Netherlands and France, it had to be decided who among these four would be hosting this edition. Since Spain had already hosted the 1969 edition and the UK the 1968 edition, they withdrew from hosting this edition. A coin was tossed to decide between Netherlands and France who would be the host, and luck favored the Netherlands.
This edition of the Eurovision Song Contest did not have a proper host like all other editions. Instead, Willy Dobbe gave a short welcome to Amsterdam to the audience at the beginning, and did not speak any more words until the voting, where she explained the basic rules and collected the votes from the spokespersons, disappearing again after the voting ended without congratulating or announcing the winners, something that Lennie Kuhr would do when giving the trophies to the winners, again without any presentations. Dobbe was credited as "Jury Presenter" in the credits.