ABC Tested the Voting System for Rising Star and It Was Super Awkward

During Monday night’s episode of The Bachelorette, ABC used their audience to make sure the online voting system for their American Idol/The Voice/The X-Factor show that is totally different than all those other shows. If the four minutes host Josh Groban and judges Kesha and Brad Paisley were on stage were any indication, this show is going to be totally different — in that it will be very, very uncomfortable.

Rising Star is apparently a “new” kind of performance show that lets the audience vote for what contestants they want to keep going in real time. Groban explained it thusly:

Rising Star is TV’s first interactive music competition where you at home decide who makes the cut while they sing in real time. Everything’s done instantly, and the power is literally in your hands. Welcome to 2014.

If this is 2014, I hate it.

This kind of amazing modern technology meant that ABC was basing the success of their entire show off an app that they hadn’t tested – so they decided to test it by forcing people to download the app if they wanted to see the new promo for Bachelor in Paradise.

Groban, Kesha and Paisley seemed to understand how strange the situation was, making numerous sarcastic apologies to “Bachelor Nation” for interrupting their program by forcing them to download an app for another show in order to keep the one they were watching going. (The situation was made worse by the fact that judge Ludacris was stuck in his helicopter and couldn’t land because of heavy clouds. “Hashtag where’s Ludacris,” said Groban.)

What would they have done if the app hadn’t worked? Dunno. It did, which means that the “gigantic, two-ton wall” that is “the real star” of Rising Star will properly get the attention it deserves when the show premieres on Sunday. Cool. Welcome to 2014.