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American Idol goes virtual: How reality competition shows are dealing with lockdown life

Singing contest American Idol is adapting to new lockdown life by airing from the homes of the show’s contestants, musicians, judges, mentors and hosts.

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New Delhi: With a majority of the world forced to stay indoors owing to the coronavirus pandemic, popular reality contest shows in the United States have adjusted to the quarantine in their own novel way.

According to a report by The Washington Post, many Hollywood productions have been on pause since the past two months and some competition series are facing challenges on how to resume filming. Amid this confusion, singing contest American Idol became the first reality competition show to air a completely remote episode. It adapted to the new lockdown life by airing from the homes of the show’s contestants, musicians, judges, mentors and hosts.


Producers helped contestants set up via Zoom

Producers of American Idol had many ideas where they contemplated that they could bring back singers and film them without an audience. Showrunner Trish Kinane told The Washington Post, “This crisis is obviously unprecedented — it could be months, it could be next year, or maybe we could never pick up the live shows. And that didn’t seem fair to these kids who worked really hard.”

“We felt, for their sake, we should continue and crown the next American Idol”, she added.

From then on, producers decided to film the show remotely. They shipped sanitised boxes of identical equipment to each contestant’s house, sent engineers to their homes to ensure their internet bandwidth was adequate, set up Zoom meetings with contestants to help them create a space to perform by suggesting camera angles and lighting possibilities.

For that episode, contestants presented their vocal skills along with a variety of setups such as glowing lights, pastel tapestries and more. The judges of the show noted that there was an added advantage in a remote episode, they could hear the “nuance” in a contestant’s voice without extensive production.

There will be a change in how contestants get eliminated too. The coming Sunday, the show will go from more than 20 contestants to the top 10, which means audiences will be voting in real-time and the host will announce the results live from inside his own house.

Another popular singing contest, The Voice also found a way to change things up in the middle of the season. Even though the producers haven’t announced a plan, coach Blake Shelton said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that the rest of the season “is going to be nuts”.

However, some reality shows have struggled to find a way out of the quarantine. NBC’s America’s Got Talent also attempted to briefly shoot without an audience, but stopped later. However, the episodes are expected to air at the end of May. CBS’s Survivor shut down production before it even started, and Fox’s dancing reality show So You Think You Can Dance was also suspended.


Also read: Who is Tucker Carlson? The TV show host John Oliver compared Arnab Goswami to


 

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