"However, to maintain public interest it is important that reality shows continue to raise the bar on interactivity, so Idols III will be giving the public even more opportunities to engage with the contestants and the show than it did before."
Idols III, beginning on 31 July 2005, will follow the format that has turned it into one of South Africa's most popular reality shows: members of the public will get to vote for their Idols of choice on Sunday nights and on Monday nights the contestants who were eliminated in the voting process will be announced. These shows will flight in Open Time, but DStv viewers will be able to see footage of their Idols and the auditions on Channel 37 all day.
Over the weeks of the show, visitors to Gold Reef City will have the opportunity to listen to their Idols rehearse and perform live. Idols finalists will be staying at the Gold Reef City Protea Hotel
Crooney says: "Obviously the Idols package itself offers a lot of value in terms of coverage from the M-Net and DStv channels, but we want to leverage the sponsorship to get the maximum amount of marketing mileage.
"Even as the popularity of other reality TV franchises starts to wane, Idols continues to be an international phenomenon. American Idols IV attracted the highest rating of any show on any network in the past 12 months, with its final becoming the third most watched night of entertainment programming ever in the Fox network's history."
In South Africa, the Idols II final show was watched by 1.3 million viewers, an 18% increase in the audience that watched the Idols I final. Over its duration, the show generated publicity worth nearly R90 million, harvested eight million votes for contestants from the public and received 67 500 unique visitors on its website.
