Indian Idol winners join film industry

(2 July 2007 10:45 pm)

At a press meet here where three participants of Indian Idol 3 – Emon Chatterjee, Deepali and Parleen Singh Gill – were also present, Sony TV brand manager Kanika Mohan Saxena said artistes like Abhijeet Sawant had proved their resilience. Getting into the industry did not merely mean recording new albums, but also presenting stage shows and Abhijeet had proved his strength in this field.

Speaking to Indiantelevision.com later, she claimed that the top eight or nine participants in each of the first two editions had already been either lapped up by the film industry or achieved success in stage performances in India and overseas. For example, she said Prajakta who had been a finalist in the last edition had already recorded in 17 languages.

She said the third edition was different in terms of the number of Indian cities it had covered – 12 - apart from two foreign destinations for auditions.

She denied that the decision to telecast the programme daily for ten days from the end of May till 9 June was a way to gain viewership. She said this had been done only because the 'Piano Round' involved the vote by viewers and it would have been unrealistic to expect them to remember names and voices for a whole week and so the voting by SMS was done daily to shortlist 28 who then went into the Gala Round to select the final 11, two more being added later by bringing back seven of the best of those who had been eliminated earlier.

Similarly, she said it was difficult to compare Indian Idol telecast on Sony TV with SARAGAMA Challenge being telecast by ZEE TV since the telecast time was different. However, SAREGAMA Challenge and Star Plus's Star Voice of India came on at the same time.

In reply to a question, she said each winner would be trained by Sony BMG for one year before recording the first album to bring perfection to the voice.

Answering questions, Emon and Deepali who are both students of Class XII said they did not agree that the arguments among the judges were put on for dramatic effect. Deepali said she had noticed that she was criticized only when she herself felt she had not performed well and so the comments were helpful. As for differences, all the three participants said that it was necessary that there should be creative differences since that showed there were no biases.

Deepali, who wants to become a radio jockey apart from training as a singer, said all participants felt more confident because of the comments by the judges which had helped them improve their performances.

Parleen, who is the only participant to have featured in the second edition of Indian Idol as well, said he noticed that each judge paid attention to a different aspect – some to the ragas, others to the performance, others to presentation, and so on. He said it was important that Indian Idol 3 had picked up participants from the grassroots and not necessarily those trained in singing.

Indian Idol is being produced by Miditech for Sony TV, and judges are composer Anu Malik, singers Alisha Chinai and Udit Narayan, and lyricist Javed Akhtar.

The third series began as a Friday-Saturday show, then going on to a daily Piano Round and going back to the weekend. However, it will be telecast for three days from Thursday to Saturday from this week to select the lone winner.

In addition to a recording contract with Sony BMG, the winner will be awarded a contract worth Rs ten million with Sony Entertainment Television.

The auditions were held in Jodhpur, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Amritsar, Srinagar, Nagpur, Vadodra, Bhopal, Kampur, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

Launched in Britain, the Idol series had already traversed to 28 countries in 40 channels all over the world.