Mipcom: Canadian Telco Bell Media Announces Innovative Music Competition Series ‘The Launch’
CANNES — Bell Media has announced its next major venture into original content, an ambitious music competition series titled “The Launch.” The innovative music competition series is a result of the combined efforts of Bell Media and Scott Borchetta, President and CEO of Big Machine Label Group.
In addition to being the nation’s largest telecom, Bell Media is among Canada’s leading content creators. The company also maintains assets in television, radio, out-of-home advertising, and digital media. The company owns 30 TV stations, headed by CTV, Canada’s highest-rated network.
Bell Media maintains it intends to reinvent the music TV series genre with an “authentic, behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to break a new artist and bring a song to life.” To advance their efforts, the producers have enlisted the help of music stars such as Shania Twain, Fergie, Boy George, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, Alessia Cara, Nikki Sixx of M?tley Crüe, Julia Michaels, Jennifer Nettles, and many more.
The format was created for markets around the world. Each one hour episode will feature five unsigned, up-and-coming artists who will compete for the opportunity to record and perform an original song written by one of the celebrity hosts.
Mentors, chosen from a panel of internationally renowned music legends, will choose two of the five artists and work with them for two days to adapt the song to the artist. The singers then compete head-to-head in front of a live audience.
Another vote is held among the mentors, and the winning version of the song is released across the country immediately after the broadcast has finished.
“Unlike any other music television program, each episode of ‘The Launch,’ begins with a new song created and shaped by the best-of-the-best within the music industry, filling a resounding gap in the genre by pairing new songs with the best-fitting emerging artists – and then immediately launching these new songs to the world,” said Randy Lennox, President of Bell Media.
Borchetta continued: “Not only did this out-of-the-box concept attract a dream team of world-class music industry mentors, each week both our mentors and our live studio audiences were part of alchemy in action. We can’t wait for viewers across Canada and around the world to experience the creation and launch of music’s next big songs.”
The first edition of “The Launch” recently finished production and will be premiering in early 2018 on CTV.
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