2004 New Cambria National Song Contest

The 2004 New Cambria National Song Contest was the first edition of New Cambria Television's popular annual music competition. It consisted of three Semi-Final rounds broadcast on Saturday evenings between 6 November and 20 November; a Wild-Card semi-final on 27 November, and a Grand Final gala held on 4 December. A total of 486 songs were submitted. Twenty-six-year-old Kyle Mason of Downey won the contest with the song "NightSong."

Format
According to the rules, songwriters, composers and performers were required to be citizens of New Cambria. The maximum song length was set at three minutes, thirty seconds. No more than three people could share credit for composing the song, and no more than three people could share credit for writing the lyrics. A maximum of four performers were allowed on stage.

The open submissions period ended on 10 September, and a total of 486 songs were received. From the 486 submissions, a panel of judges selected 96 songs to present to the contest's organizers. The 96 shortlisted songs were then handed to a fifteen-person jury of music professionals, NCT staff and other members of the public ranging from teens to fifties. The 24 songs that were selected to appear in the Semi-Finals were presented to the public on 1 October, and assigned starting positions in the Semi-Finals by draw later that same day.

The three highest-scoring songs in each Semi-Final automatically qualified for the Grand Final gala on 4 December. In addition, the fourth- and fifth-placed songs in each Semi-Final were selected to compete in the Wild Card Semi-Final on 27 November. The highest scoring song in the Wild Card Semi-Final joined the nine qualified songs in the Grand Final.

In each event, half of the total score came from a panel of ten jurors, and the other half came from telephone voting. The juries were composed of musicians, singers, NCT personnel and fans. For the 2004 contest, the window of time during which viewers could vote was five minutes, and a maximum number of votes per telephone number was ten. The charge for casting a vote was 10c. NCT entertainment correspondents Travis Egan and Darcy Hiller hosted the events. And the prize money awarded to the winners was set at ₤120,000, to be divided equally amongst the composer(s), songwriter(s) and performer(s).

Grand Final Gala
The Grand Final was broadcast at 8:00pm on 4 December, from the Brock Carter Memorial Arena in Arvant, St. George's County. Following the voting period and preceding the announcement of the results, members of the Southport production of Les Misérables performed a medley of songs from the show as an interval act.

In the Grand Final, the ten-member jury panel ranked the songs, and awarded them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 points, with the favourite receiving 10 points. The jury panel was confirmed on 28 October 2008, included American comedienne Amy Sedaris and Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morisstte.

The telephone and SMS votes were totaled and assigned the weight of 10 individual juror's votes. The songs received 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 points, with the highest-ranking song receiving 100 points. A total of 82,298 valid votes were cast..