Rising Star executive producers, Ken Warwick and Nicolle Yaron, reveal to the Hollywood Reporter how they will handle the problem of live voting across multiple time zones.
The show will air at the same time across most of the country. Eastern (9-11 p.m.), Central (8-10 p.m.) Mountain (7-9 p.m.) and Arizona (6-8 p.m.) time zones will all air Rising Star live on Sunday nights beginning with its premiere on June 22.
Viewers on the west coast will see a taped version tweaked to show real-time voting particular to those viewers and a comparison to how the rest of the country voted. If a contestant who didn’t go through fares better on the west coast, the contestant will still go through. So, voting. Not quite live. 70% of the live voters have to approve in order for a contestant to advance.
“Everyone can vote and take part in the process,” said Warwick. “On the West Coast, they have their own voting bar. That means that if somebody on the East Coast gets 65 percent, and doesn’t go through, and then the West Coast votes over 70 percent, that [contestant] will go through. We’ll put up a graphic as it happens.”
It sounds like the east coast vote has to be close to 70% for the west coast vote to have an affect on the result. Also, there’s no accommodating the reverse of that scenario. If left coasters actively hate an act east coasters put through, too bad for them.
But the producers aren’t worried. They consulted mathematicians who assured them there wouldn’t be a huge difference in votes between the west and east coasts. “We met with mathematicians and statisticians,” said Yaron. “The chances of there being a big difference are apparently very small. We have this in place just in case, but we don’t know that we’ll ever have to use it.”
Since the west coast is effectively being left out of the interactive piece, viewership might fall off there. Also if you live in Hawaii or Alaska? SUCKS TO BE YOU. Or not.
Each act will meet with the Rising Star “panel of experts” (Kesha, Ludacris and Brad Paisley) after their performance. During the critique, contestants saved by the west coast voters will appear in the corner of the screen celebrating their reprieve.
Read more at Hollywood Reporter
