Asia’s Got Talent with Pinoy touch

MANILA, Philippines - Television personality, host and producer Simon Cowell has charted popular shows that not only discovered and gave rise to genuine talents, but also secured successful franchises worldwide. From American Idol to X Factor to America’s Got Talent, the list goes on and Simon’s name is prominently attached to these shows.

Asia’s Got Talent is a new edition of Simon’s Got Talent franchise. The show features not just singers, but all sorts of artists who can flaunt their talents. There are dancers, magicians, musicians, comedians, even ventriloquists, cyclists and circus performers — name it.

Asia’s Got Talent premiered last March 12 and presently airs in 20 countries across Asia. The Philippines has a successful franchise, Pilipinas Got Talent, which started airing in 2010 on ABS-CBN. So far, the contest has produced winners who are all singers — Jovit Baldivino, Marcelito Pomoy, the Maasinhon Trio and Roel Manlangit. Even runners-up like Khalil Ramos started their careers by joining the said show.

Asia’s Got Talent takes pride in the Philippines’ very own Marc Nelson and Rovilson Fernandez as hosts. The two, as most everyone knows, were introduced to the Asian TV audience when they joined The Amazing Race Asia 2 in 2007. Although they ended up only in third place, they were the strongest team in that competition, charting first place finishes from the second to the eighth leg and also in the 11th leg.

The judges for Asia’s Got Talent are four multi-faceted and accomplished individuals who bring their respective, illustrious careers to the show. There’s multi-Grammy-winning composer, musician and record producer David Foster, who has added our very own Charice Pempengco to the list of artists he helped build up internationally.

Then there’s former Spice Girls member Melanie C (Sporty Spice), Indonesian singer Anggun (Snow On the Sahara was her first international album) and Taiwanese-American artist and former F4 member (who can forget Meteor Garden?) Van Ness Wu.

In September and October last year, Asia’s Got Talent started its open ground auditions in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines (at the SMX Convention Center of SM Mall of Asia).

So far, those who enlisted were talents from China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Taiwan.

The show airs from Singapore and on its maiden telecast, two talents from the Philippines got the nods of all four judges. There’s all-male hip-hop group Junior New System and young singer Gwyneth Dorado, who impressively sang Katy Perry’s Roar and even got David to sign her guitar.

Asia’s Got Talent airs Thursday nights on AXN.