The Final 1 season 2
The second season of The Final 1 premiered on MediaCorp Channel 5 on 5 July 2015. It is a Singaporean reality-singing competition programme created by the director of Hype Records Ken Lim. It was won by Jermaine Leong.
Taufik Batisah and Lim returned for their second season as judges, and were joined by new judge Jaclyn Victor who replaced Kit Chan. Chan later returned to the show as a guest judge while Victor was away for her maternity leave. Season one's runner-up Shaun Jansen joined the show as the host.
Similar to the previous season, the winner would receive a cash prize and a management contract worth $100,000.
Show changes
On 30 June 2015, it was announced via a promotional video of the show that returning judges Taufik Batisah and Ken Lim would be serving on the judging panel for the second season. Season one judge Kit Chan did not appear in the video, and therefore was ruled out of returning to the show. It was not announced whether the show would bring in a third judge to replace Chan, though the season began with only Batisah and Lim as the judges for the first two episodes. On the third episode, it was announced by Lim that the show would be bringing in a third and final judge for the season, and revealed to be Jaclyn Victor.Vanessa Vanderstraaten and Mike Kasem did not return to host the second season. They were replaced by Shaun Jansen, who was only officially introduced by Lim and made his first appearance in the seventh episode.
In this season, a few major changes to the format of the show was made. Contrary to the previous season, the public would not be allowed to vote for their favourites and play a part in deciding the contestants to advance in the competition. The judges would instead be the ones making the decision to eliminate contestants from the competition to ensure those "getting through to the next round will be only purely on vocals and talent". The public would only be allowed to cast their votes when the competition is left with the final two contestants to decide on the winner.
Unlike the previous season where the show was mainly taped at the MediaCorp TV Theatre, most of the competition rounds would be recorded at The Ground Theatre at *SCAPE this season. In addition, apart from the final three episodes which would be shown live, all episodes would be pre-recorded and the results shows were discontinued. Results from the previous week would only be revealed during the following week's show.
The upper age limit for the contestants is reduced to 26 in this season, which brings the eligible age-range to 16 to 26 years old.
Online and regional auditions
The show is open to all citizens and permanent residents of Singapore aged 16 to 26 as of 1 January 2015. The online auditions began on 22 February 2015 and ended on 20 March 2015 at noon. To participate in the auditions, all contestants must register themselves at the official website of the show and submit an audition video of no more than three minutes long. Over 1,000 audition clips were submitted for the competition.Auditionees who have submitted their online video were later invited to attend a face-to-face audition session conducted by the producers. The producers auditions were conducted in all of the five Community Development Council districts in Singapore, with the contestants attending the one in the area they reside in. The audition sessions at the Central and South West districts were also opened for walk-in auditionees who did not register themselves for the online auditions.
At the end of the regional auditions, the producers shortlisted a group of potential contestants for the judges, Batisah and Lim, who then selected 12 males and 12 females to advance to the next round of the competition as the final 24.
Top 24 finalists
The following is a list of top 24 finalists who failed to reach the top 16 rounds:;Males Top 24 roundsThe top 24 finalists were separated by gender, and performed in groups of four for the first round. The groups and song choices were all chosen by the producers. The second round involved solo performances, with the judges selecting contestants they were uncertain of moving on to the next round to perform again. After this round, the judges eliminated two contestants from each of the gender groups.The judges later announced they have to eliminate more contestants from the remaining 20, and called out the bottom 3 contestants of each gender group. The contestants who were not called out were declared safe, and each of them had to pick one contestant from the opposite gender group to advance with them to the final 16. Two contestants were saved from elimination via majority votes by their fellow contestants, and the rest were eliminated.
Top 16 finalistsThe following is a list of top 16 finalists who failed to reach the finals:
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