As I personally thought that The Voice was quite innovative already, I was totally surprised when I heard about Rising Star. Not only was I interested because people are really judged on their singing qualities, it includes some technological innovations as well.
Instead of listening to all the judges and their opinions, Rising Stars enables you to be a judge a yourself! With the Rising Starr app you can easily swipe people to the next round. The swiping aspect of the app reminds me to the Tinder app. In fact you are now doing the same with the performers on Rising Star. If you swipe to the right you’ll vote for the contestant to go the next round. Pretty awesome, right?
Another new aspect is that if the performer gets enough votes, an enormous wall will ‘rise’. But not just a wall. It is an huge video screen that shows both the performer and the viewers at home. The application is linked to your Facebook and Twitter account, so you will see your Facebook or Twitter profile picture on that wall. How cool would it be if you see yourself on national television?
I think that the programme would be a real success in The Netherlands. And I’m not the only one who thinks that, as Joop van den Ende has bought the rights for Rising Star. I think it especially can become a huge success if the app lets you share your judgements on social networks. Nothing takes more up to the trend ‘real-time’ than social media. On one hand, If viewers don’t want to install the Rising Star application, I think they have to make it possible to vote through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For example using the hashtag RisingStar and then the name of the contestant. And on the other hand, you can make the app more attractive by adding exclusive content of the show.
The only fault of the American version of Rising Star is that there was not a possibility to vote by texting or calling. There are people that don’t want to give their personal information to commercial companies, they believe it is an invasion on their privacy. When Joop van den Ende is going to launch the Dutch version of Rising Star, voting through texting and calling needs to be possible.
References
http://abc.go.com/shows/rising-star
http://www.endemol.nl/Nieuws/Paginas/Endemol-Nederland-verwerft-rechten-van-tv-sensatie-%E2%80%98Rising-Star%E2%80%99.aspx
I think, this is a very good idea and it could be very popular in The Netherlands. The idea of giving your vote, instead of just listening to a professional jury, is way more interesting for many people. Besides, if Van Der Ende liked it and thought that it is worth to buy it, there is a big change on success. It is also a good development for the shy people, who don’t want to be in the middle of a show. It is just sending your video, but it won’t be directly on television which is probably nice for them.
The most important option is the connection with Facebook and Twitter. These platforms will provide a big audience for good videos, which will be a good thing for the popularity of the app. I’m wondering what the rest of Dutch think of it.
I agree that it is a very good way to engage audience into the judgement of the TV show, but I just wonder how heavy would the votes from audience influence the results of competition. Since 2005 there has been a trend of television programs of draft in China, and at the very beginning the directing group already adapted the system of voting. You could vote for the singers you like with hotlines, SMS, or via their official website. The effect was very obvious that in the final nearly 500,000 people voted for the singers they supportd. But what happened later was that some singers “bought” the votes to help themselves pass, which seriously damaged the fairness of the competitions. So it is good to engage people with social media, but also be careful with the power of large population.