Following the international success of its trailblazing talent show Rising Star, Keshet International has unveiled its plans to launch an innovative real time interactive format Elevator Pitch. The high concept show sees entrepreneurs stepping into an elevator to deliver a pitch of a lifetime to business tycoons and the entire live viewing audience, in the hope of securing funding to take their passion projects to the next level.

Elevator Pitch is a live interactive viewing event which directly engages the audience and gives them an influence over the fate of the show’s contestants and their ideas. They are asked “Would you buy the product/idea being pitched?” and thereby encouraged to watch the show in real time and take an active role in how it unfolds via a digital app. The new launch underlines Keshet’s commitment to continue bringing pioneering digital formats, which change the way viewers watch television, to the world. Keshet has again teamed with Tedy Productions, which it also partnered with on Rising Star and other hit formats, to produce the primetime show.

In a new and unique format pillar, the live viewing audience effectively takes part in the quickest and largest market research test ever executed on TV. An entrepreneur must pitch to the nation and the five tycoons located on the top floor, to secure a minimum percentage of the viewing audience and the tycoons’ interest within the time limited elevator journey. Only then can they enter the studio and take part in a dramatic live bidding war with the tycoons who have voted “in”. If they can’t travel up the required number of floors, the elevator returns to the ground floor and the entrepreneur sadly leaves without ever coming face to face with their potential investors.

Elevator Pitch is a dramatic and cutthroat television event that instantly determines the level of market confidence in an idea and, by putting the end consumers centre stage, lets them decide whether to press the button and elevate the entrepreneurs to the top of their game.

Elevator Pitch will launch on Keshet Broadcasting in Israel later in 2014. Its trailer will be revealed at the Rising Star Case Study session at MIPTV Formats on April 6 at 3.40pm-4pm.