Saipan Singing Superstar Year 2: PDA Season 2 goes Saipan-style

The Saipan Singing Superstar Year 2 competition of Saipan Grand Hotel held its first elimination last week at the Southern Cross Bar.

Eleven contestants qualified for the grand finals in a series of competitions this October. They are: Bernie Dizon, Chelo Marie Minguito, Demalyn Sablan, DonneL Isip, G. Hernandez, Janee Babauta, Jenny Sanchez, Macky Custodio, Michele Villaraza, Rona Bautista, and Walden Beri Jr.

The criteria for judging is 20 percent text votes and 60 percent musicality. Tomorrow, Sept. 27, 2008, is critique night and the eviction night is on Oct. 4, 2008, at the Southern Cross Bar. The Top 6 winners of Batch 2 will be joined by the batch’s 11 finalists and will be considered grand finalists.

The grand final series of events will highlight four performances—songs of their own choice, upbeat type of music, duet performance and a medley production number. The 16 grand finalists will do these four performances, which will comprise 60 percent of the criteria; 15 percent will be the given to each performance. Gala night will be on Oct. 12, 18, 25, and Nov. 1, 2008, Saturdays at 6pm at Club V of Saipan Grand Hotel. A Club V party follows at 9:30pm.

The remaining 40 percent of the criteria will be based on text voting, which will end at 7pm of Nov. 8, 2008, which will be the awards night of the Saipan Singing Superstar.

The Saipan Singing Superstar is the island’s version of Pinoy Dream Academy Season 2—a popular reality and talent show that airs over The Filipino Channel—which had its finale last week. Laarni Lozada from Sultan Kudarat in the southern part of the Philippines, got the highest text votes and became The Pinoy Dream Academy Season 2 Grand Star Dreamer.

The gala and eviction nights of the PDA Season 2 until the Final Performance Night were shown live on Saipan via PTI and TFC at the Southern Cross Bar of the Saipan Grand Hotel every Saturday. As the show host Toni Gonzaga always says, “We are live worldwide.” For the first time also in the history of text voting on Saipan, Filipinos here was able to support their scholar of choice through text votes because of PTI’s partnership with ABS-CBN.

Watch out for the culminating event of the SSS season 2 and the PDA season 2 winners. [B][I](PR) [/I][/B]