Rising Star: What Did You Think of the Fan-Judged Singing Competition?

ABC premiered its own attempt at finding talented singers tonight, hosted by Josh Groban and featuring Ludacris, Kesha, and Brad Paisley

NBC has The Voice, Fox has American Idol. Obviously, ABC needed its own gimmick-ridden singing competition show, and Rising Star was what they came up with.

The interactive concept is actually pretty interesting. A contestant performs live in a round room, all by themselves. They can see a screen showing the faces of the fans who vote positively for them through the Rising Star app, but cannot see anyone else. The "judges" and audience watch them on a screen outside the round room. When they're done performing, if they have a specific percentage of positive votes, they advance to the next round. If not, they wait for the west coast airing. After the west coast airing, they might advance to the next round, or they might just go home. 

The show is hosted by Josh Groban, who is awesome, while Kesha, Ludacris, and Brad Paisley made up tonight's celebrity panel of people who are judging but do not technically have the same power judges typically have. They can vote up or down as well, and their votes have a slightly higher impact on scores.

While we're kind of into the concept, we're not sure about having contestants perform by themselves in a room surrounded by floating faces. We certainly wouldn't be able to do that, despite the fact that we usually put on our best performances alone in our car, surrounded by the floating faces of other drivers. On second thought, we would be great at this show, and are thinking of signing up.