Tel Aviv/ London – Screenz announced on June 12 their collaboration with Google to host the Screenz Real Time Platform, a global, live, interactive infrastructure for television shows enabling broadcasters and format owners to transform programmes into live events.

The first show to use Screenz Real Time Platform is Rising Star – Keshet International’s hit TV show that first aired in Israel in September 2013, and will be launched in over 25 countries around the world including on ABC in the U.S. on June 22. Rising Star is a trailblazing interactive TV format that marks a new era in home entertainment. The show enables real-time voting by viewers from their sofas via an innovative mobile app, fully integrated to the programme. It is the first talent show where the viewer is the judge from start to finish. The show features performers making their debut on stage alone, from behind a giant wall of TV screens. They can only make their entry to the studio round by securing more than 70% of the viewers’, judges’ and live audiences’ vote. The audience can see the results of their vote in real time and if they vote positively, have a chance that their picture will be shown on the giant wall. If a contestant achieves 70% of the votes, the wall dramatically lifts revealing the studio audience and expert panel.

Rising Star

The collaboration between Screenz and Google delivers the scale to process a huge number of interactions per second and has been successfully employed so far to support the show in Brazil, Portugal and Israel. In testing the Real Time Platform processed a remarkable 100 million interactions per minute.

Screenz is working with broadcasters and TV production companies worldwide to leverage its unique Real Time Platform to create and support innovative new formats. The proven benefit of the Platform for broadcasters is the way it hikes up the level of engagement a viewer has with a show at the exact time when it is aired. The system also enables sophisticated audience targeting allowing broadcasters and brands to effectively identify viewer demographics and interests.