During the ABC executive session at today’s Television Critics Association tour, it was announced that Rising Star, a new singing competition show from Israel, will premiere on the network in June 2014. Read the initial ABC announcement about the show HERE.
The competition will be live from the get go, with viewers able to vote on contestants as they perform. Once the singers hit a threshold, which viewers can keep track of on the screen, they move on to the next round. The viewers can vote thumbs up or down on the app, the process which entertainment president Paul Lee described as “almost like a modern-day coliseum.” He calls the format a “game changer.” Hm.
Lee noted the voting app is designed by people from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, adding that he perhaps shouldn’t actually be telling us this. He also compared it to The Gong Show (which he definitely shouldn’t be telling us)
The app was especially popular in Israel with viewers 18-34, according to Lee, and believes the immediacy of voting in real time will be the main draw.
The producers are still figuring out how to deal with the time zone problem. It may turn out that fans on the west coast will vote along with the east–before the show airs in their zone. Sounds very similar to The Voice twitter save, which allowed fans to save a contestant from the bottom 3 in real time. It put the west coast at a real disadvantage however. Viewers had to follow the official twitter feed in order to participate, in effect, spoiling the results for them.
That’s not quite the case here, as a west coaster could vote and then wait until the show airs to find out what happened. But, I can’t imagine west coast fans making an effort to be available at 5 pm for a show they can’t watch or have never watched. That effort takes a certain level of commitment, which The Voice fans had already by the time the live shows rolled around. I’m sceptical.
