[alanross]

I've just finished reading all the posts and it seems clear that the majority of KJs despise the thought of having to run a Karaoke Contest. I, too, despise them.

We are located in a resort area which relies almost entirely on summer tourism for its annual economic vitality. So in the off season, during the four weeks of January, one of the places we play, has insisted we run a Karaoke Contest. It does draw in more business for the bar all through January and the first part of February and then we're right back to normal, but by then we're only a few weeks away from a trickle of tourism resuming.

This past year was the eighth annual contest and it ran far smoother than in years prior because I changed my attitude.

Everything is what you put into it. I decided to embrace the contest this year and having made that decision, I focused on making it the best it could be. I developed a new scoring system for the judges which the bar manager has always appointed; I prepared a written explanation of how the judging was done and what the judges were grading on. I then made sure each judge was aware of the parameters of the judging and gave the contestants all the same information. These printouts made it clear to everyone what the judges were looking for, including the judges.

We play at this place seven nights a week and the contest is only held on Wednesday nights for four weeks of qualifying in January and the finalists all return the first week in February to compete for the grand prize. Every other night they can come in and practice the songs they want to sing for the qualifying and final rounds. Plus they can come to any of the dozen other shows we host at other places around town on any given night to practice. This seriously reduces the number of "just pop in to win people" because it's a month long event. It also increases business to all our shows because, as you know, Karaoke singers take it VERY seriously.

During each qualifying week, we chose the top three scoring vocalists as finalists so by the end of the fourth week we have 12 contestants for the finals. We also don't make the whole show about the contest. It is a subset of the Karaoke night. The first hour and a half are for anyone who wants to sing and for the contestants to warm up a bit. Then the contest runs for an hour, TOPS. Then we return to regular karaoke for everyone after the weekly prizes are awarded.

We follow the same format for the finals. In the south we call it the "y'all sing" time before the contest, then the finals, then back to "y'all sing".

I LOVE the idea of singers judging each other. Every year I hate hearing the moaning and complaining of the people who don't win, but if they judge each other, there's no one to blame but each other! Brilliant!

But the secret to the success this year was really my attitude. I gave it all I had. I was every bit as fun and lively as I am every other night of the week. Everyone knows how much I hate doing the contests and they all sympathize with me when I have to run one. I am friends with every one of our regulars and they know I have absolutely no love of the contests, so they spotted the change right away. Everyone's energy remained high, each contestant sang with all their worth, the judges paid stick attention to detail and you could see the contestants really try to give what they knew the judges were looking for.

At the end of the night, everyone felt like they had done their best performance ever and amazingly, all but one lady from out of town (who was terribly tone deaf and didn't understand why she didn't win) felt that the right person won based on the judging criteria.

The criteria I created was a score of 1-25 for Song Choice (How well the song suited the person's personality and voice); 1-25 for Stage Presence and 1-50 for Vocal Talent. Best possible score being 100. Three judges can each score up to the max for each category and the scores are all then added together for a max score of 300 per contestant. By having a wide range of 1-25 for scoring, the judges have more room to play with subtle differences between contestants. Scoring from 1-10 means that "Bill" and "Sue" could both get an 8, while using 1-25 means Bill could get a 20 and Sue a 22 because she was slightly better in a category.

Next year, however, I will apply these same criteria to the new judges (THE CONTESTANTS!) and I'm having them judge each other. Just brilliant! (That's probably why I didn't think of it - it's BRILLIANT!)

I hope this helps anyone who has to run a contest even against their recommendations to the owners/managers.

- Alan Ross
Nags Head, North Carolina