Sony attempted to launch Fame Gurukul, a singing talent hunt, similar to their Indian Idol talent hunt, but according to BestKeptSimple, has changed its format after 20,000 people turned out for auditions and violence broke out. In order to register now, applicants will have to send an SMS message to Sony:

From last night, after the audition in Calcutta, we have started a new system via SMS to allow contestants entry. To register for the audition, a person has to send an SMS to Sony.

“We will see if the person meets with the eligibility criteria and if he does, he will receive an SMS back from Sony, mentioning a particular date, time and venue for an audition”, said Nikhil Alva, chief operating officer, Miditech, which is producing the show for Sony.

“The idea is to keep the number of contestants under check at a particular time”, he said. The filtering was necessary to avoid the possibility of an unexpectedly huge turnout.

“No television channel is equipped to manage the kind of crowd that turned up”, he added.

Yesterday in Calcutta, at the first audition for the show, the television channel had expected around 5,000 people. But a crowd of about 20,000 turned up, leading to chaos and a police lathicharge.