It's billed as a 'semi final' but in fact is an elimination round, as there is no other 'semi final'. Those selected on Saturday will go through to the 'final' on February 12.
That is not the only quirk in the way the Latvian Eurovision entrant will be selected. Whether an act is selected for further consideration will depend on an esoteric combination of text message and telephone voting, and the opinions of the in-studio jury.
Furthermore, the democratic notion of 'one person, one vote' has been done away with and viewers will be able to call and send an unlimited number of text messages from one phone number, provided they are willing to pay for them.
In an even more Byzantine ruling, while 10 participants will definitely go through to the final, the jury and Latvian Television itself will retain the power to nominate an eleventh participant for the final as a "wild card" if they see fit. Or they can choose not to exercise this arbitrary yet absolute power at all. The criteria for such a course of action remain opaque but will presumably boil down to potential viewing figures.
The show will be hosted by Ketija Šēnberga un Lauris Reiniks.
If you would like to see who gets the multiple-vote thumbs up and who receives the imperial thumbs down, you can watch "Supernova" February 5 at 21.05 on LTV1: https://ltv.lsm.lv/lv/tiesraide/4264/supernova-2022-pusfinals.
The finals of the 66th Eurovision Song Contest will take palce in May this year in Turin, Italy. As previously reported by LSM, Latvia's entrant will sing in the first semi-final (of which there will actually be two).
