Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022

Eurovision Song Contest 2022
Country	Romania
National selection
Selection process	Selecția Națională 2022
Selection date(s)	Semi-finals: 5–10 February 2022 12 February 2022 Final: 5 March 2022
Selected entrant	WRS
Selected song	"Llámame"
Selected songwriter(s)	Andrei Ursu Cezar Gună Alexandru Turcu Costel Dominteanu
Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest
◄2021 • 2022

Romania is scheduled to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Turin, Italy, with "Llámame" performed by WRS. The Romanian broadcaster, Televiziunea Română (TVR), organised the national final Selecția Națională 2022 in order to select the Romanian entry for the 2022 contest. The national final consisted of three shows, including two semi-finals and a final. A total of 46 entries were selected and 10 qualifiers ultimately competed in the final on 5 March 2022, where the winner scoring top marks from both a jury panel and a public televote was selected.

Background[]

Prior to the 2022 contest, Romania has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 21 times since its first entry in 1994. Its highest placing in the contest, to this point, has been third place, which the nation achieved on two occasions: in 2005 with the song "Let Me Try" performed by Luminița Anghel and Sistem, and in 2010 with "Playing with Fire" by Paula Seling and Ovi.^[1] In 2020, Televiziunea Română (TVR) did not fully select its representative by means of the national final format Selecția Națională for the first time ever. They collaborated instead with Global Records to internally select the entrant, Roxen, with only her entry "Alcohol You" being selected through the national final.^[2][3][4] However, the contest was ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The entrant was internally re-selected to take part in the 2021 contest with the song "Amnesia", which failed to qualify to the final, placing 12th in the first semi-final. This marked the third consecutive time that the nation failed to qualify to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest since the introduction of semi-finals in 2004. Following the televised debate Eurovision... pe șleau! ("Eurovision... frankly!") on 5 July 2021 which featured personalities of the national music industry, the broadcaster confirmed their intentions to participate at the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest on 20 October 2021 and would opt for a national final with several artists to select their 2022 entry.^[5][6][7][8]

Before Eurovision[]

Selecția Națională 2022[]

Selecția Națională 2022 is the national final organised by TVR in order to select Romania's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022.^[8] The competition consists of two shows: a semi-final featuring twenty songs and a final featuring ten songs to be held between 5 February and 5 March 2022.^[9] The two shows are being televised on TVR1, TVR HD, TVRi as well as online via the broadcaster's streaming service TVR+ and YouTube. The two shows are also being broadcast in Moldova via the channel TVR Moldova.^[10] An additional three shows, titled Drumul spre Torino (Road to Turin) and hosted by Ilinca who represented Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017, were aired on TVR1 between 5 and 7 February 2022 in order to give insight on the competing acts.^[11]

Competing entries[]

TVR opened a submission period for artists and composers to submit their entries between 26 November 2021 and 19 December 2021. The broadcaster received 94 submissions within the submission deadline.^[12] A jury panel consisting of  [ro] (singer),  [ro] (opera singer, actress),  [ro] (singer, producer), Cristian Faur (composer, producer) and  [ro] (composer, conductor) reviewed the received submissions on 21 and 22 December 2021, with each juror on the committee rating each song between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest) based on criteria such as the melodic harmony and structure of the song, the orchestral arrangement, originality and stylistic diversity of the composition and sound and voice quality.^[13] After the combination of the jury votes, the top 45 entries that scored the highest, one per artist that entered with more than one song, were selected for the national final. The competing entries were announced on 23 December 2021. Among the selected competing artists are Ciro de Luca, who represented Romania in 2007 as part of Todomondo, and Cezar Ouatu, who previously represented Romania in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013.^[14][15]

On 28 December 2021, TVR announced that "Malere" performed by E-an-na would also participate in the competition following a successful appeal made by the performers. "Best of Me" performed by Alex Parker, Erik Frank and Bastien was withdrawn from the competition on the same day and replaced with Parker and Bastien's second song "All This Love".^[16] "Hypnotized" performed by Barbara Tešija, was withdrawn from the competition on 5 February 2022.^[17]

Semi-finals[]

The semi-finals took place on 5–10 and 12 February 2022. Forty-five songs competed in the first semi-final and twenty qualified to the second semi-final. A jury panel first selected fifteen songs to advance, and a public online vote which took place on the Eurovision Romania Facebook page on 9 and 10 February 2022 then selected an additional five qualifiers from the remaining thirty entries.^[18] On 9 February, "That Way" performed by Fabi was withdrawn from the semi-final due to testing positive for COVID-19,^[19][20] while the twenty qualifying entries were announced on 10 February during the TVR evening news broadcast.^[10][21] The second semi-final took place at the TVR studios in Bucharest, hosted by Anca Mazilu and Bogdan Stănescu with Ilinca hosting segments from the green room.^[22] Twenty songs competed and the jury panel selected ten songs to qualify to the final.^[23][24] The members of the jury panel that voted during the semi-finals were: Alexandra Ungureanu, Ozana Barabancea, Randi, Cristian Faur and Adrian Romcescu.^[13]

Final[]

The final took place on 5 March 2022 at the TVR studios in Bucharest, hosted by Eda Marcus and  [ro] with Ilinca hosting segments from the green room.^[27] Ten songs competed and the winner, "Llámame" performed by WRS, was determined by the combination of the votes from the jury panel and public televoting. Each member of the jury voted by assigning scores from 1–8, 10 and 12 points to their preferred songs, with the juries awarding 290 points in total. The viewer vote was assigned by dividing the votes received by each song by the number of votes of the song that gained the most viewer votes. This number was then multiplied by 12 and rounded to two decimal places. For example, if song A received the most viewer votes and song B received 10% of song A's votes, then song A would be awarded 12 televoting points and song B would be awarded 1.2 televoting points.^[14] The members of the jury panel that voted during the final were: Alexandra Ungureanu, Ozana Barabancea, Randi, Cristian Faur and Adrian Romcescu. In addition to the performances of the competing entries, the interval acts featured performances by 2016 Eurovision winner Jamala, who performed her winning song "1944", as well as seven 2022 Eurovision entrants: Intelligent Music Project (Bulgaria), Zdob și Zdub and Frații Advahov (Moldova), Vladana (Montenegro), Andrea (North Macedonia), Ronela Hajati (Albania), We Are Domi (Czech Republic) and Stefan (Estonia).^[28][29]

Ratings[]

At Eurovision[]

According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country and the "Big Five" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) are required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progress to the final. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) split up the competing countries into six different pots based on voting patterns from previous contests, with countries with favourable voting histories put into the same pot. On 25 January 2022, an allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in. Romania has been placed into the second semi-final, to be held on 12 May 2022, and has been scheduled to perform in the second half of the show.^[32]

References[]