BANGALORE: Asianet`s Kannada offering Suvarana will be hosting a music reality show `Confident Star Singer` starting December 10.The one-hour show will run from Monday to Friday at 8 pm. Asianet`s Idea Star Singer, which started about four months ago in Malayalam in Kerala, has been one of the most popular reality shows in South India.

Suvarna`s edition of the show has the Confident group as the chief sponsor. In the Malayalam version, Idea Cellular is the chief sponsor, and the Confident group the co-sponsor.

Besides the chief sponsor, Suvarna has managed to rope in five to six local brands for the show, and is in talks with a few others for co-sponsorship. The chief business of the Confident Group is construction.

According to `Confident Star Singer` program executive director Raghavendra, Suvarna received almost 50,000 applications for `Confident Star Singer` show through telephone interactive voice reply service (IVRS). The sizeable chunk of the applications was from Bangalore and Mysore.

The number was filtered to 500 based on the IVRS. The selected 500 were asked to send in CD`s with their sound clips in three genres ?“ classical, fast beat and melody. The Suvarna team pared this further to 200 participants who had to audition before the judges - music director Guru Kiran, playback singer Nanditha and musician Praveen D Rao. The judges brought down this number to 101 participants who will now feature on the channel.

`Confident Star Singer` is a reality talent hunt show for singers in the age group of 15-30 years. The final winner will be awarded a house worth around Rs 4 million and also get to sing in Guru Kiran`s next movie.

"We have expanded our prime time slot by one and a half hours", informed Suvarna COO Shyam Sunder while speaking with Indiantelevision.com.

"Earlier our primetime was between 6.30 pm to 10 pm. Now it will be between 6 pm to 11 pm. The shows that used to run at the 8 pm to 9 pm will be shifted to other timings," added Shyam Sunder.

According to Sunder, the first edition of the show is likely to run over six months with 130 episodes.