"Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka "Eurovizijos" dainų konkurso nacionalinė atranka (Eurovision Song Contest national selection) was the national final format developed by LRT in order to select Lithuania's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2014. The competition involved a 12-week-long process that commenced on 21 December 2013 and concluded with a winning song on 23 February 2014 and a winning artist on 1 March 2014. The 12 shows took place at the LRT studios in
Vilnius and were hosted by Simona Nainė and
Arūnas Valinskas. The shows were broadcast on
LRT televizija,
LRT Lituanica, and
LRT Radijas, as well as online via the broadcaster's website
lrt.lt. The final was also streamed online on the official Eurovision Song Contest website
eurovision.tv.
Format The Lithuanian broadcaster overhauled the format of the national final from that of previous years. The 2014 competition consisted of 12 shows and involved artists competing independently from songs, potentially being paired with any of the songs that were selected for the competition. The rules stated that composers were required to agree to the condition that their song may be offered to an artist they did not originally write the song for. The first show was a jubilee concert, where 15 of the 20 competing artists participated in a celebration of past Lithuanian Eurovision songs, and no elimination took place. From the second to tenth shows, the artists performed covers that related to the theme of that particular show and the potential Eurovision songs. The second and third show consisted of ten artists each and five were eliminated. During each of the fourth to tenth shows, one artist was eliminated, and the remaining three artists advanced in the competition. Starting from the fifth show, the 16 potential Eurovision songs competed on a weekly basis and a total of 13 songs were eliminated following the tenth show, leaving three songs remaining. The eleventh show was the competition's semi-final, where only the winning song was selected from the remaining three songs, while the twelfth show was the final, where the winning artist-song combination was selected from the remaining three artists. The format of the competition was originally set to take place over a ten-week period, where four artists would participate in the final; however, an additional two elimination shows were held after LRT experienced success in the ratings with the elimination shows. The results of each of the 12 shows were determined by the 50/50 combination of votes from a jury panel and public televoting. The jury votes in all shows consisted of a combination of a Lithuanian jury panel and an international jury panel. From the second show to the semi-final, the members of the Lithuanian panel were required to come to a consensus in order to assign one set of points, which were added to the international panel results. During each show, each member of the international panel assigned points in a descending order with the highest score for their favourite and the lowest score for their least favourite, while the Lithuanian panel assigned a score from 1 to 10 to each artist from the second to the fifth shows and points based on ranking starting from the sixth show. In the final, the Lithuanian and international panels voted together, with each member awarding one set of points based on ranking. The public could vote through telephone and SMS voting, and the ranking developed by both streams of voting was converted to points from 1-8, 10 and 12 and assigned based on the number of competing artists in the respective show. Ties in the elimination shows and the semi-final were decided in favour of the entry that received the most votes from the public, while in the final, a tie would be decided in favour of the entry that was awarded the most points by the jury.
Competing artists and songs On 2 October 2013, LRT opened two separate submission forms: one for artists and another for songwriters to submit their songs. The submission deadline for both applications concluded on 15 November 2013. On 28 December 2013, LRT announced the 20 artists selected for the competition. Among the artists was previous Lithuanian Eurovision contestant
Sasha Song, who represented Lithuania in
2009. The 16 potential Eurovision songs selected from 106 submissions received were announced for listening and voting on 12 January 2014.
Artist and song progress in the shows Artists Songs Jury members The Lithuanian jury panel consisted of four members in the elimination shows and the semi-final, and two members in the final. The international jury panel in all shows consisted of three members: Brandon Stone (German music producer and composer), Valerij Prosvirov (Russian producer and record label director) and Liselott Björk (Swedish singer and vocal coach).
Shows Elimination shows The ten elimination shows of the competition aired between 14 December 2013 and 15 February 2014 and featured the twenty competing artists. In the first four shows, the artists performed covers that related to the theme of that particular show: past Lithuanian Eurovision songs in the jubilee concert, past Eurovision songs in the second show, Lithuanian hit songs in the third show, and worldwide hit songs in the fourth show. No elimination took place during the jubilee concert, while the second and third show each featured ten artists and the bottom five were eliminated. One artist was eliminated in each of the fourth and fifth shows and the remaining eight artists in the competition performed the potential Eurovision songs starting from the sixth show. The artists each performed one song in the sixth and seventh shows and two songs between the eighth to tenth shows, and one artist was eliminated per show. For the ninth elimination show, LRT opted to delay the announcement of the results until 10 February 2014 after conducting an investigation in regards to voting fraud. On 10 February, LRT announced that the televote score for Martynas Kavaliauskas had been reduced from 1,332 to 655 as it was discovered that a mobile operator was inflating Kavaliauskas' votes. This ultimately led to the elimination of Kavaliauskas from the competition as he ranked last by both the jury vote and the public vote.
Song selection The 16 potential Eurovision songs were evaluated by the public through an internet vote on LRT's voting platform over four rounds. Voting in the first round was to take place between 11 and 18 January 2014, however, it was extended by a week until 25 January 2014 due to a change in the format of the competition.
Semi-final The semi-final of the competition aired on 23 February 2014 and featured each of the remaining three artists that qualified from the tenth elimination show performing the remaining three potential Eurovision songs. The show was originally scheduled to air on 22 February 2014; however, it was postponed due to LRT broadcasting live coverage of
Euromaidan in
Ukraine. The members of the Lithuanian jury consisted of Vytenis Pauliukaitis (director), Deivydas Zvonkus (lead singer of the group B'Avarija), Ramūnas Zilnys (music reviewer), and Edmundas Seilius (opera singer). International jury members included Brandon Stone (German music producer and composer), Valerij Prosvirov (Russian producer and record label director), and Liselott Björk (Swedish singer and vocal coach). The combination of the jury vote and the public vote resulted in a tie between two songs with 22 points each: "Attention" and "Take a Look at Me Now". "Attention" was declared the winning song as it received the most votes from the public. In addition to the performances of the competing artists,
Monika Linkytė performed as the interval act.
Preparation Following Vilija Matačiūnaitė's win during the Lithuanian national final, the singer recorded the final version of "Attention" at Studio 301 in
Sydney with technical production by
Sameer Sengupta. The final version was released on 28 March. Earlier on 15 March, LRT broadcast the support concert
Būkime kartu, where Lithuanian viewers could call to donate funds to support the Lithuanian Eurovision participation. The concert featured guests
Jurga Šeduikytė, Ramūnas Rudokas,
Marius Jampolskis, Pop Ladies, and
Sasha Song, and raised 48,000
LTL from the public donations.
Promotion Vilija specifically promoted "Attention" as the Lithuanian Eurovision entry on 5 April 2014 by performing during the
Eurovision in Concert event, which was held at the
Melkweg venue in
Amsterdam, Netherlands and hosted by
Cornald Maas and
Sandra Reemer. ==At Eurovision==