Country Ukraine Selected entrant Gaitana | Selection date(s) 18 February 2012 Selected song "Be My Guest" | |
Selection process Evrobachennya 2012 - Natsionalyni vidbir Semi-final result Qualified (8th, 64 points) | ||
Ukraine participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The Ukrainian entry was selected through a national final, organised by the Ukrainian broadcaster NTU. Gaitana represented Ukraine with the song "Be My Guest", which qualified from the second semi-final and went on to place 15th in the final, scoring 65 points.
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Evrobachennya 2012
On 23 August 2011, NTU confirmed its participation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012.
On 25 November 2011, NTU announced more details about the national selection. Singers were able to send their entries to NTU from 25 November 2011 until 25 December 2011. A total of 20 were originally planned to compete in the national final: nineteen candidates were to be selected by a jury and one candidate would be given a wildcard from Inter Channel's show Number 1.
On 25 January 2012, artists were required to attend an audition in front of a selection panel, which was composed of Vlad Bahinskyj (musical producer at NTU), Volodymyr Kozlov (RU Music television channel director), Victoria Romanova (international relations department at NTU) and Ivo Bobul (singer). The jury ultimately selected 20 candidates to compete in the national selection, which were joined by Inter Channel wildcard Nerealnye (The Incredibles). An additional wildcard from the non-qualifying entries was awarded through internet voting on the say.tv platform.
Final
Evrobachennya 2012 took place on 18 February 2012 at NTU Studios in Kiev, hosted by Timur Myroshnychenko and Tetyana Terekhova. 21 songs ultimately competed with a jury (50%) and SMS (50%) vote deciding the winner. On 11 February, the draw for running order was completed on the late night program Shuster Live. On 15 February, Max Barskih and the song "Dance" was awarded the wildcard for the competition. On 16 February, singer Matias and the song "I Will Fight To The End" were withdrawn from the competition due to a conflict of interest with the singer's manager, Vlad Bahinskyj, being a part of the selection panel during the auditions.
Each member of the jury panel rated each entry from 1-10. After summing the jury totals, the entry that received the most points was awarded 21 points, while the entry that received the least would be awarded 1 point. Ties were broken by awarding the song that received more higher ratings from the jury members. The public votes were awarded from 1 point to 21 points based on the amount of SMS votes each entry received. After the combination of jury votes and SMS voting, Gaitana was the winner with the song "Be My Guest".
The jury panel consisted of Walid Arfush, Alyona Mozgova, Rudolf Kirnos, Mariya Manyuk, Yurij Rybchunskyj, Egor Benkendorf and Semen Gorov.
At Eurovision
Ukraine competed in the second half of the second semi-final (7th on stage), on 24 May 2012, following Portugal and preceding the Bulgaria. Gaitana received 64 points and placed 8th, thus qualifying for the final on 26 May.
In the final, Ukraine was drawn to perform 25th, after Serbia and preceding Moldova. The Ukrainian entry scored a total of 65 points and placed 15th in the final.