Urapopstar Idol 13

URAPS Idol 13 is a singing-based reality television competition aired in the United Kingdom & Ireland on ITV1 & RTE1 respectively. The shows thirteenth season premiered on 4 August 2012 in the UK and produced by BBW productions, owned by Syd Wolfe.

Mentors and Presenters
Syd Wolfe led the panel as head mentor for her second season on the show. After shaking up the format she, along with the shows producers, selected Aurora Reed, Jackson Bradshaw & Calvin Andrews as mentors. American reality show stars & actresses, twin sisters, Tia & Tamera Mowry were selected to present the live shows.

Format
Production for URAPS Idol 13 started as early as April 2012, with Wolfe holding numerous meetings with producers at BBW & ITV to "shake up" the existing format. Wolfe prevailed and revealed the show would benefit from a number of changes. Firstly, Wolfe changed the title of judges to mentors. Next and most noticeably, and for the first time ever on URAPS Idol, it was announced the contestants were to be split into "Teams" with each mentor taking 4 singers to their team. Rather than the usual way of having the 'judges' sitting behind a large desk, each mentor has their own built-up seat with their name and an 'Idol' logo embedded into the seat. This allowed the mentors to select which singer they were interested in during the audition rounds. This change also allowed the contestants to decide whose team they would be on if more than one mentor wished for them to be on their team.

Auditions
Auditions began on 24 July 2012 at London's o2 arena, England where more than 19,000 people turned up to audition; the most auditionees any talent show had ever seen. The large numbers caused controversy in the British press when it was revealed that 90% of those that auditioned that day in London didn't even receive the chance to audition for the 'star' judges and instead auditioned for producers. Auditionees complained that they were given 30 seconds to sing but 90 seconds to tell their "story". Auditions were also held in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham & Belfast, Ireland.

Live shows
The debut live show premiered on 4 August 2012 to 20 million viewers at its peak on ITV1, the highest ratings for a single episode of URAPS Idol ever. The new look, format & judges were all heavily praised by critics and fans of the show. Ratings took a steady tumble to around 15 million viewers from then on, but dipped to 13 million on 15 September, its last live show of 2012. Reasons for the ratings decline were described to be due to an industry slow-down and not lack of interest in the show. However, after losing half of its initial audience, Wolfe & ITV made the decision to place the show on hiatus until the industry picked up pace. This news couldn't have come at a better time for Tamera Mowry-Housley who was heavily pregnant during the live shows and was finding the live stages difficult.

Wolfe has since confirmed that the show will return in Spring 2013 with the mentoring line-up still intact, but advised that some of the contestants may no longer be with the show due to the 6 months of inactivity. Contestants who had already made it through to the live shows were given the option to stay on the show upon its return or leave to pursue other endeavours. It is unknown how many, if any, of the contestants have left the show.