Sunday All Stars: Reality Show or Variety Show?

Sunday All Stars is an entirely new concept, mixing the aspects of reality television and variety show into one.

GMA 7‘s ‘Sunday All Stars’ has been on the air for over a month. However, as the show’s run went along, I wondered if ‘Sunday All Stars’ really qualify as a reality show or a variety show. Here’s how I found out.

Sunday All Stars: The Reality Show

According to Wikipedia, reality television is a type of television genre that presents unscripted situations, documents actual events and usually features unknowns instead of professional actors. Reality shows emphasize on drama and personal conflict, and also features interviews by the subject that doubles as a narration. Such elements are a fixture on competition-based reality shows, which includes the elimination of a contestant in each episode, a panel of judges, and the winner receiving immunity in the next episode.

Some aspects of reality television is featured on ‘Sunday All Stars’, from backstage drama and conflict, contestant interviews, rehearsals, ‘live’ performances and judge reviews. However, the elimination concept is not used, although the immunity concept for winners is emphasized.

Sunday All Stars: The Variety Show

Variety shows feature performances from various individuals or groups, introduced by a host or a group of hosts. ‘Sunday All Stars’ is an example of this format. Of course, they could have not been viable to Sunday afternoons without adopting this format.

The format of ‘Sunday All Stars’ is a novel one: a variety show with hints of reality television added to it. In the past, variety shows on Sundays are exclusively about performances by artists, as seen on ABS-CBN’s ASAP and GMA‘s former programs SOP and Party Pilipinas. However, ‘Sunday All Stars’ introduced viewers to a new type of variety show, adding a twist of drama and behind-the-scenes footage of the groups involved. Whether or not it will interest audiences remains to be seen. 

Right now ‘Sunday All Stars’ is still on the infancy stage. If they succeed in gaining audiences, the show’s run will last more respectably than Party Pilipinas; otherwise GMA will need a different approach in Sunday programming.

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Another New Sunday Concept for GMA

GMA 7 is set to launch ‘Sunday All Stars’ on June 16. But will this show become an audience favorite? (Logo courtesy of GMA Sunday All Stars Facebook Page)

I wrote a prior article regarding GMA 7’s inability to beat ABS-CBN on Sunday afternoons. Then came those teasers for the upcoming Sunday variety show ‘Sunday All Stars’. They announced that the new show will debut on June 16. But how did it all started?

Since ‘Party Pilipinas‘ aired for the last time, GMA 7 aired Filipino movies and teleserye reruns in the vacated timeslot while ‘Sunday All Stars’ await its debut. I have previously written about the need for sports programming to be aired on GMA 7, but the executives themselves had no clue on how to temporarily fill the timeslot vacated by ‘Party Pilipinas’. So instead they aired those cheesy movies, and recently they aired the first-week rerun of ‘Anna Karenina’. The latter I think is not that important; they should have aired the final week of ‘Love and Lies’ instead of ‘Anna Karenina’ for the reason that the climax of a series is the more dramatic than that of the beginning, which would interest audiences. As expected, ASAP emphatically beat GMA 7’s rerun programming in the weeks following the demise of ‘Party Pilipinas’.

Which brings me to ‘Sunday All Stars’. Unlike ‘SOP‘ and ‘Party Pilipinas’, the upcoming program is said to combine elements of traditional concert-based variety shows and weekday game shows like Eat Bulaga. Apparently it is not a new concept; TV5 once used this approach in their P.O.5 (Party on 5). Like its predecessors, the performers will come from the stable of the GMA Artist Center, along with veteran stars Janno Gibbs, Ogie Alcasid, Regine Velasquez-Alcasid, and Jaya. The show is a fresh and modern concept designed to attract a younger and more energetic audience. However it took weeks to develop before the teasers finally start rolling.

Now that the show is about to debut, the question is, will it be able to stay at par with ASAP? We’ll find out. Also there’s still no word on the new Sunday afternoon showbiz talk show that GMA is planning as a replacement for HOT TV, so keep an eye on that.