British broadcaster ITV has announced plans for a brand new televised singing talent contest set to rival other primetime shows, including the like of The X Factor, The Voice, and Strictly Come Dancing. The show will bring the concept of real-time voting, where viewers can actively influence whether performers stay on the show or not, to Saturday night television.


The news comes in the light of revelations that ITV's current main talent show, The X Factor, is consistently losing out on ratings to the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing and it is hoped that Rising Star could help remedy the decline in ratings when it is launched in January 2015.

The premise of the contest is fairly simple: prior to the show, viewers enter online through a free app that will allow them to vote in real time when the contestants are performing. The panel of judges are able to influence the vote, but it will be the viewers at home who have the lion's share influentially.

The success of the contestant is based on whether they achieve a 70% approval benchmark that is shown in a progress bar on the side of the screen. The contestant who receive 70% approval from the viewers' voters as well as a thumbs up from the judges will see the giant screen in front of them rise to allow them to walk out to see the judges and the studio audience, will progress to the next round.

See How 'Rising Star' Works:

The idea for the show was born in Israel and has been bought from Israeli production company Keshet International. Whilst being broadcast, Rising Star garnered staggering ratings and the promise that the success of the innovative idea could be translated internationally - something ITV are evidently banking on.

When Rising Star was broadcast in Israel it hogged a massive 44% share in its timeslot, with seven times the viewers of the second-placed show "It's rare that you find a genuinely innovative new entertainment format, but Keshet have come up with one, and I'm very pleased that it will now be on ITV," said ITV's director of entertainment Elaine Bedell in a statement, who added that it'll be "an incredibly dramatic, emotional and exciting show."

One of the Israeli programme's highlights was a rabbi duo who performed a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence.' The UK show, which will replace Dancing On Ice in January 2015, will hope to find similarly unique and exciting talent amongst its contestants. Well, they can try.