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TORONTO — Canada’s search for its own version of One Direction and The Fifth Harmony has begun.
YTV’s The Next Star, a music talent competition series to find a Canadian singing superstar 15 years of age and under, on Sunday evening unveiled a spinoff series that scours the country for a made-for-TV super group.
The news came as 15-year-old Alicia Moffet from Saint-Lazare, Quebec, was crowned YTV’s The Next Star for season six.
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The Next Star: SuperGroup, to be hosted by Camp Rock’s Jordan Francis, will see star mentors work with young Canadian talent to put together the next popular five-piece boy band or girl band.
The series from The Next Star creator Tricon Films & Television will see performance coaches like The X Factor’s Damon Sharpe and actress and recording artist Cory Lee put the teenage groups through boot camp to hone their voices and synchronized dance moves.
The spinoff series will follow the same format as The Next Star, as 30 finalists travel to Toronto and compete in groups of five.
Eventually two groups will go head-to-head in the live finale in Toronto, with TV viewers voting on who wins the grand prize and the title of The Next Star: SuperGroup.
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And, as with The Next Star, the spinoff series will be Canadian in discovering and nurturing the talent, as young TV viewers are encouraged to faint with excitement over their favorite boy or girl bands.
“We’ll be trying to solicit votes and try to get people to like [contestants]. But it’s done with a lot of fun. Just like all of our reality shows, we do it with a positive mindset,” Jocelyn Hamilton, vp programming and original production at YTV-parent Corus Kids, insisted.
“Yes, there’s a winner of the show, but all of them have learned something and grown with this experience,” Marc Kell Whitehead, general manager of production at indie producer and distributor Tricon, added about The Next Star format.
The Next Star is a summer series for YTV, while the spinoff series, to debut in spring 2014, aims to keep the brand in front of TV viewers for most of the year.
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