Croatia: Five acts one step closer to Eurovision

The national selections of Croatia have had a change of format for 2011. With the expansion of Dora, the name used since long for the selections, the contest is spanning no fewer than seven shows. All of them are shown on the main TV channel, broadcast by live web stream and also broadcast on Croatian radio.

Saturday night, the first five artists out of 24 entrants proceeded in the selections, in a show where the artists performed well-known songs by acts like Queen and Cher. The qualifiers from the night are highlighted from the line-up in bold below:

• Artemija Stanić
• Damir Kedžo
• Ivana Brkašić
• Tina Vukov
• Miro Tomić
• Mila Soldatić
• Valentina Briški
• Jelena Vanjek
• Sabrina Hebiri
• Mario Sambrailo
• Dora Benc
• Jacques Houdek

The sixth and final qualifyer from the night will be announced in the Dora show next Saturday, which means that the viewers will have an entire week to vote for their final candidate. The Croatian public are choosing the songs to progress through each of the first six shows by televoting.

The goal: A final duel

In each of the first and second programmes, twelve artists are competing, and six of them are eliminated. In the third programme, the twelve artists who got the most votes in the first two programmes will compete, and six will be eliminated. In the fourth programme, the remaining six artists will compete, and two will be eliminated. In each of the fifth and sixth programmes one artist will be eliminated, with only two artists remaining for the national final.

The last two artists remaining will perform in the final show on Saturday 5th March. In the final, there will be a 50/50 split between public televoting and a special jury. The winner will ultimately represent Croatia in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest in Düsseldorf.

The 24 artists and songs which have made it through from the initial submissions were chosen by an expert jury.

Error in voting results

The day after the semi-final, it was announced on HRT's Dora 2011 website that a technical error has occured while processing the results of the televoting, and that Jelena Vanjek received more votes than Damir Kedžo, who had originally been announced to have qualified.

Next week

The second semi-final, on the 29th of January, will include the following artists:

• Darija Kinzer
• Renata Holi
• Mijo Lešina
• Marija Rubčić
• Manuela Svorcan
• Katica Marinović
• Doris Teur
• Mirko Švenda
• Diana Heraković
• Ana Eškinja
• Filip Dizdar
• Saša Lozar

Failed to qualify

Despite being one of the early favourites in Oslo 2010, Croatia's Feminnem failed to qualify from the Second Semi-Final with their ballad Lako Je Sve. Croatia's biggest successes in the Eurovision Song Contest were in the late 1990's when they achieved 4th place twice, in 1996 in Oslo with Maja Blagdan's Sveta Ljubav and again in 1999 with Doris and Marija Magdalena.