Rising Star falls in Germany

RTL Television in Germany has decided to end its remake of the Israeli talent show format Rising Star early following a poor ratings performance.

The finale of Rising Star Germany has been brought forward to this Thursday, when RTL will air an extended episode between 20.15 and 00.00 to decide the winning performer, rather than complete the 10-episode season it ordered last year.

The show’s most recent episode, its sixth, attracted just 1.11 million viewers and a market share of 5.6% among 14-49s on Saturday evening, according to local reports, and RTL said yesterday that it had decided to end the series prematurely because of the “lack of audience response.”

Rising Star – sold globally by Keshet International, the production and distribution arm of Israel’s Keshet Media Group – allows viewers to vote on the efforts of singers in real time via an app as they perform behind a screen, giving them immediate feedback.

If the performer secures 75% of votes from viewers and judges, the screen rises and the performer is revealed. The series was originally produced by Tedy Productions for Keshet Broadcasting slots on Channel 2 and premiered on the network last September.

RTL added that nearly two million people have registered for the Rising Star app and that it had attracted more than 17 million votes over the course of the six episodes that have aired in Germany so far. That hasn’t, however, been enough to save it from an early end.

The format has already aired in Brazil (RedeGlobo), Portugal (TVI) and the US (ABC), and further versions are set to be broadcast in more than 20 other territories, including China (CCTV) and the UK (ITV).

Local media in the UK have speculated that the format will be stripped across a single week in March 2015 by ITV, which was spooked by the show’s poor performance in the US, according to newspaper the Daily Mirror.