Raj Nayak, CEO – Hindi Mass Entertainment, Viacom18 talks about the launch of Colors’ Rising Star, India’s first live talent show, supported real-time by a mobile app to give 130 crore of the Indian population 79% control to judge a talent show.
LIVE RESULTS MAKE RISING STAR A CLIFF-HANGER OF A SHOW: RAJ NAYAK
Colors will launch India’s first live talent show Rising Star, supported real-time by a mobile application, to give 130 crore of the Indian population 79% control to judge a talent. Music director and singer Shankar Mahadevan, actor and singer Diljit Dosanjh and singer Monali Thakur have been roped in as part of the expert panel. Produced by Optimystix Entertainment, ‘Rising Star’ will air on weekends starting February 4, 2017. Here’s what Raj Nayak, CEO – Hindi Mass Entertainment, Viacom18 has to say about the property.
ON USP OF RISING STAR: We are emphasizing on the live factor because many viewers believe that the shows they watch - like Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, Bigg Boss, India's Got Talent - are live. Viewers don’t realize that these shows are recorded and not live and we are bringing in this differentiation. The beauty of the show is the constant engagement. You get a live result every time a contestant performs and this creates a cliff-hanger throughout the show. Unlike other shows, where you vote and then wait for a week for the results, here the result is live.
ON SPONSORS OF THE SHOW: Oppo is the presenting sponsor and we are in discussion with others.
ON PRODUCTION CHALLENGES: Production is a challenge and the truth is, we don’t know what the challenges are. We will discover them as we go along.
ON AD BREAKS: There won’t be a fixed pattern for an ad break and it will be completely dynamic. Our challenge will be to start on time and hopefully end on time. Ad breaks will be taken but when and how it will be taken will be dynamic. Even our ad insertions will happen live.
ON THE COLORS TV APP: We don’t want people to come and engage with us only on the weekends when there is live voting. We want to keep the viewers engaged throughout the week and are creating content especially for the app. While the app is for Rising Star, we have been using and testing the app during Bigg Boss and Shakti - Astitva Ke Ehsaas Ki and will use it for different purposes, even for our fiction shows, to keep the viewer engaged. We had one million downloads for the app during one Bigg Boss weekend episode and over five million downloads in total.
ON MARKETING RISING STAR: It will be one of our biggest marketing campaigns for any show that we have done. As it’s a new show and people have be educated and informed about it, there will be a lot of activation happening on ground.
ON EXPECTATIONS IN 2017: The year 2016 has been a great year for us and we have had the maximum number of successes in all our new launches. We hope 2017 will be as good and the run continues. We hope our viewers will continue to give us the love and our advertisers will continue to give us the money.
