A de­layed-live broad­cast of In­ter­na­tion­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch will be aired across sev­er­al plat­forms and me­dia sta­tions this week­end.

The se­mi-fi­nal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion was held on Wednes­day at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (South NA­PA).

This year’s show in­cludes a Text to Vote el­e­ment pow­ered by Bmo­bile which will form part of the of­fi­cial judges’ points in­stead of a sep­a­rate Peo­ple’s Choice award. Votes from around the globe will ac­count for up to 20 per cent of the per­form­ers’ fi­nal points and will open from 6 am to­day and con­tin­ue un­til Tues­day.

This year, the show fea­tures an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of glob­al en­tries, with eight of the 36 se­mi-fi­nal­ists com­ing from non-T&T ter­ri­to­ries.

Founder of the com­pe­ti­tion, George Singh, said the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to can­cel Car­ni­val cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring some­thing new to the ta­ble.

“Over the past few years, when we have been look­ing at the on­line au­di­ences for many Car­ni­val shows, we have no­ticed an ex­po­nen­tial in­crease rel­a­tive to au­di­ences that phys­i­cal­ly at­tend the shows. Cre­at­ing an on­line-cen­tric show was some­thing that we had been con­sid­er­ing for some time, and this was the time and op­por­tu­ni­ty to do it,” he ex­plained.

He added, “There was an­oth­er rea­son be­hind want­i­ng to pur­sue a new for­mat too.

“This year, we ap­point­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives in New York, Toron­to and Guyana—to bring artistes in these ter­ri­to­ries on board. In­stead of hav­ing to trav­el, this year the reg­is­trants would have sub­mit­ted their per­for­mances for screen­ing and once se­lect­ed, they would have per­formed and record­ed their se­lec­tion ac­cord­ing to our guide­lines and sent to us for in­clu­sion in the show.”

The Se­mi-Fi­nal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion will air on YouTube Live; the of­fi­cial Chut­ney So­ca Monarch Face­book Page, CNC3 TV and Sangeet Ra­dio 106.1 FM.

View­ers can vote lo­cal­ly us­ing the unique text codes for artistes iden­ti­fied dur­ing the show. Re­plays of the show will re­main on the so­cial me­dia pages and YouTube chan­nel as well.

T&T fans can vote by tex­ting their artiste’s three-dig­it code to 64726 and in­ter­na­tion­al fans can text their artiste’s code to 1 868 798 0141. In­di­vid­u­als can vote as many times as they like, for any per­former they like.

Each lo­cal text costs $2. Each in­ter­na­tion­al text costs $3.