Heart Beats Leads Keshet International’s NATPE Miami Highlights

TEL AVIV: Keshet International (KI) is gearing up for NATPE Miami 2017 with a slate that includes the new musical reality competition show Heart Beats, co-developed with Argentina’s Telefe.

Heart Beats looks to pair aspiring singers in order to turn them into music’s next power couple. Through a dedicated app, viewers vote on live performances in real time. They can also shake things up by voting the contestants into new musical and romantic couples each week. Viewers can also engage with the show through instant messaging, photo and video sharing, and by entering competitions to win prizes in each episode. Set to premiere soon on Telefe with daily prerecorded episodes capped by 20 live weekly galas, the format is the result of the two companies’ co-development deal, which was struck in 2015.

Mercedes Reincke, the head of content development at Telefe, said, “Heart Beats is a format that is the result of hard work, two highly creative teams and a lot of love. Very much like Heart Beats, the result of this co-development, working side by side with KI brings the best of two great entertainment companies from halfway around the world and the combination of our cultures has resulted in this extremely disruptive format. We want to see what happens when music works as an engine for love, and love works as an engine to provide the best music. It has been a great journey working with KI and we hope this is just the beginning.”  

“We are very excited about the opportunity that NATPE presents to us this year to showcase Heart Beats, a uniquely Israeli-Argentine format hybrid resulting from the co-development pact with our outstanding partners at Telefe,” said Kelly Wright, KI’s head of Latin America. “Besides being a lot of fun professionally and creatively, we place a great deal of importance on working with our local partners to develop content.”

Additional formats and finished programming that Keshet International is presenting to buyers in Miami include the finished Indian version of the KI drama Prisoners of War, the adventure-reality format Welcome to the Wild, the mediation format Boxed, the shopping game show Check Out and the hidden-camera game show Deal With It Spain.

Additional highlights are Touch, the cross-media game brand for TV and mobile; the lifestyle/food/travel program #TheFeed; the talent-show format Master Class; the drama The Fare (Santo Forte), which is also available as a format; the docudrama Residents; the thriller Cold; the teen comedy Mr. Student Body President; and the sci-fi/action series Miss 2059. There is also the docureality format Manbirth, with the Singaporean and Chinese versions of the program available.