Croatia participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 with the song "Nebo" written and performed by Nina Badrić, who was selected internally by the Croatian broadcaster Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) on 10 January 2012 to represent Croatia at the 2012 contest in Baku, Azerbaijan. Her song Nebo" was presented to the public on 18 February 2012 during the special programme Dora 2012 - Idemo na Eurosong s Ninom!. Croatia was drawn to compete in the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest which took place on 24 May 2012. Performing during the show in position 10, "Nebo" was not announced among the top 10 entries of the second semi-final and therefore did not qualify to compete in the final. It was later revealed that Croatia placed twelfth out of the 18 participating countries in the semi-final with 42 points. Background Prior to the 2012 contest, Croatia had participated in the Eurovision Song Contest nineteen times since its first entry in . The nation's best result in the contest was fourth, which it achieved on two occasions: in 1996 with the song "Sveta ljubav" performed by Maja Blagdan and in 1999 with the song "Marija Magdalena" performed by Doris Dragović. Following the introduction of semi-finals for the , Croatia had thus far featured in five finals. In 2010 and 2011, the Croatian entries failed to qualify from the semi-finals; the last time Croatia competed in the final was in 2009 with the song "Lijepa Tena" performed by Igor Cukrov featuring Andrea. In 2011, Croatia failed to qualify to the final with Daria and the song "Celebrate". The Croatian national broadcaster, Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT), broadcasts the event within Croatia and organises the selection process for the nation's entry. HRT confirmed Croatia's participation in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest on 22 November 2011. Since 1993, HRT organised the national final Dora in order to select the Croatian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest. For their 2012 participation, Dora was planned to be continued featuring invited artists having the opportunity to choose their composers for their entries. However, such plans were later cancelled due to low interest with the Croatian broadcaster opting to internally select the entry. Before Eurovision Internal selection On 10 January 2012, the Croatian national broadcaster HRT announced that it had internally selected Nina Badrić to represent Croatia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2012. Nina Badrić previously attempted to represent Croatia at