Many American shows have enjoyed increased success via their mobile apps, but ABC’s “Rising Star” is the first whose success is predicated on its mobile app.

Based on a format pioneered by the Israeli show “HaKokhav HaBa,” “Rising Star” is a fairly straightforward singing competition show but with an interactive element that sets it apart: Viewers may vote “Yes” or “No” on contestants in real time, by using the show’s app available for Apple and Android devices. With 90 seconds to sing their guts out, each contestant must earn at least 70% of those “Yes” votes (the show’s judges, Ludacris, Kesha and Brad Paisley, also cast votes, each of which are worth 7% of the total) in order to raise “The Wall” that hides them from the audience and judges and thereby move on to the next round. Singers who fail to earn 70% yes votes must exit stage right.

Critics of “Rising Star” have claimed the singing reality genre has peaked and that an interactive angle isn’t a good enough reason to enter it at this late stage in the game. Others claim its live voting format can’t work in a country as big as the US, where results have already been tallied in the East Coast feed before the given night’s episode has even aired on the West Coast. (As of now, West Coast viewers’ votes can overturn rejected singers, saving them from dismissal. However, singers who have made it past The Wall cannot then be rejected by West Coast viewers after the fact.)

Chatting with Variety editor-in-chief of digital Andrew Wallenstein at last week’s Social TV Summit in Beverly Hills, Robert Mills, VP of alternative series for ABC Entertainment Group, said his network had simply fallen in love with the Israeli version’s premise. Having designed an incredibly simple and user-friendly swipe-left-for-yes, swipe-right-for-no app interface, the show’s creators, Keshet Broadcasting, had a previously untapped interactive element “figured out,” explained Mills. “Everyone knows how to swipe left, swipe right. If everyone has the app, this could be big.”

Which of course begs a big question: Are viewers ready to watch a show that requires the downloading of an app to fully enjoy? To that end, Mills admitted that, following the show’s debut on June 22, “the first-night numbers weren’t what we’d hoped for” but that “more and more each week you see people talking. More and more people are downloading [the app] each week.”

In fact, “Rising Star,” which airs Sundays at 9:00pm, was coming off its highest-rated episode since its June 22 debut, garnering 4.8 million viewers overall on July 15. Whether that bump (which followed multiple weeks of descending numbers) was from increased interest in the show itself or spillover from ABC’s highly popular World Cup final broadcast, remains to be seen. When pressed for numbers regarding the app itself, Mills said he wasn’t in possession of the most current data.

The success of “Rising Star,” like any show in this day and age, is far from guaranteed, but either way, it’s another step forward for interactivity in television. During a Q&A period, one audience member asked Mills if interactivity is an initiative for ABC now regardless of the fate of “Rising Star.” “It would have to service the show and the storytelling,” Mills replied, explaining that while no one is looking to produce an interactive show just for the sake of doing so, “now that one has worked, I think it will embolden people.”

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