Hot Israeli format Rising Star has been bought by ITV for broadcast next year. It’s a reality singing contest that uses – YES! – social media to add a twist. People vote on acts as they perform and Facebook pictures fill up on a wall in front of them. If between the audience voting at home and the studio judges they get a 70% approval rating, the wall lifts up and they progress to the next round.
You can certainly understand the appeal for broadcasters, it’s a live show where the audience interacts and effect the results in real time (with an app! Hello youth!), and by all accounts the show got off to a massive start in Israel.
But we’re also informed it isn’t rating all that well over there at the moment, and they dropped The X Factor flash vote pretty quickly didn’t they? Gut feeling suggests it’s got all the hallmarks of a show that people who like to write about TV think will be amazingly genre-redefiningly big but I reckon will do average at best. Interactive television = work for the viewer.
It looks a bit like something from Charlie Brooker’s 15 Million Merits Black Mirror story.
The first thing that came to mind when I read this was, how do they deal with the inevitable trolls who would try to get some not-safe-for-TV pictures on that wall?
My understanding is that this format has the same issue as The Voice – they’ve found a hit idea, but have no idea how to progress the heats into a meaningful final.