The final episode of the 2005 season was one of the most popular shows in Chinese broadcast history, drawing more than 400,000,000 viewers, more than CCTV's New Year's Gala earlier that year. The final peaked at 280,000,000 viewers at a given time, higher than the 12,000,000-viewer figure for the finals of "Pop Idol". Despite the show being condemned by CCTV as being "vulgar and manipulative", season 3 of the show was launched and finished in early October 2006.
On January 18, 2006, China National Philatelic Corporation released a postage stamp issue featuring 2005 winner Li Yu Chun. The set was shortly earlier than Li's twenty-second birthday in her commemoration.
On May 11, 2009, "The Oprah Winfrey Show", a worldwide famous television show, invited Zhang Liangying, who ranked 3rd overall in the 2005 contest, to make an American television singing debut. The subtitle of the show was "The World's Got Talent" and Zhang Liangying was the only east Asian singer in the show.
Some who were not chosen as winners have also been able to enter the recording industry through other means. Ji Min Jia, who ranked fifth overall in the 2005 contest, worked in Los Angeles in 2006 to help with production of the title song for Japanese anime series "The Galaxy Railways". On March 15, 2007, Japanese recording group Hello! Project announced Li Chun, one of the top 50 contestants in the 2006 Changsha regional, as one of two new members of Chinese ancestry of its pop group Morning Musume.
The contest has also inspired television producers to create other talent search shows.
One of the main factors contributing to the show's popularity was that viewers are able to participate in the judging process by sending SMSs with their mobile phones to vote for their favorite contestants. During the 2005 regional contest in Chengdu alone, 307,071 message votes were cast for the top three contestants, each vote costing ¥0.5 to ¥3.
Over 800,000,000 text messages were sent during the third season of "Super Girl", and fan clubs began to appear throughout the country. After the large response to the ability to vote, the Chinese government banned the show from continuing to a fourth season. The show was the feature of a 2007 documentary titled "Super, Girls!", produced and directed by independent Chinese filmmaker Jian Yi on the 2006 Super Voice Girls contest, released at the Cambridge Film Festival. An ARTiSIMPLE Studio production, "Super, Girls!" is the only independent feature-length documentary ever made about the "Super Girls."
While some culture and media experts praised "Super Girl" in blazing "a trail for cultural democracy" and breaking elitism in China's entertainment industry, others stated that "the show represented a superficiality in society, propelled by behind-the-scenes manipulation and state-of-the-art pomp and circumstance".
Mengniu reportedly paid ¥14,000,000 to Hunan Television for rights to sponsor the show's broadcast outside Hunan province beginning with the 2005 season. The 2005 contest was estimated to have drawn in a total of ¥766,000,000. Indirect business impact of the competition was estimated at several billion yuan.
Television advertisement slots cost an average of ¥33,400 for 15 seconds in 2006, compared to the average of ¥28,000 in 2005. Advertising sales were expected to reach ¥200,000,000, nearly double that of the previous year.
The first season of "Super Girl" aired from 6 May to September 22, 2004. Although the winners of the competition were not promised recording contracts, the top three winners signed such deals.
The second season of "Super Girl" aired from March 19 to August 26 in 2005. There was much controversy about the Li Yu Chun being the season's grand champion as she had the most votes even though she had "the weakest voice among the top finalists". Despite the heavy criticism that arose during the competition season, the three 2005 finalists have been considered the most successful singers from the entire show.
The third season of aired from April 2 to September 30, 2006. Shang Wen Jie's selection as grand champion over Tan Wei Wei, who is a professional vocalist from Sichuan Conservatory of Music, raised questions at each candidate's public appeal. Speculations arose that Shang, who appeared to be a copycat of Li Yu Chun's image, was voted grand champion due to the appeal of her Cinderella story.
Voluntary (music)
In music a voluntary is a piece of music, usually for organ, which is played as part of a church service.
The word “voluntary” can be used for the title of a piece of music. The title was often used by English composers in the late Renaissance or Baroque periods for a piece of organ music that was free in style, i.e. it did not have to be composed in a strict form such as sonata form or a fugue. It was meant to sound as if it was being improvised (the word voluntary in general means “free”, i.e. not “forced to do something”).
Composers such as Orlando Gibbons, John Blow and Henry Purcell wrote voluntaries, although sometimes they preferred to use other titles such as "fancy" (an English form of the Italian word "fantasia"), or even "fugue". However, these "fugues" were not composed in the proper fugue style: they just started off with imitation as in a fugue, but continued in a freer style.
Some voluntaries were called "double voluntaries". These were pieces written for organs with two manuals (keyboards). The pieces contrasted a loud manual with a soft one.
Some voluntaries were known as "trumpet voluntaries". These were voluntaries which had a tune which was played (with the right hand) on a stop called a “trumpet” or a “cornet”. Two very famous trumpet voluntaries, often played at weddings, are the trumpet voluntary by Henry Purcell and the one by Jeremiah Clarke (which people used to think was composed by Purcell). In the 18th century the composer John Stanley wrote many trumpet voluntaries.
Aalen
Aalen (pronounced ) is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is the capital of the Ostalbkreis district, and its largest town.
Bad Wörishofen
Bad Wörishofen ] is a spa town in the district Unterallgäu, Swabia, Bavaria.
It is known for the water-cure of Sebastian Kneipp (1821 – 1897), a Catholic priest, who was living there for 42 years. Many hotels and boarding-houses are in the town where guests can be treated using Kneipp's methods. There is a new spa complex out of town, called Therme Bad Wörishofen.
Cult movie director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a native of Bad Wörishofen.
Bürgermeister
The German word Burgermeister often spelled in English as "Burgomaster" or "Burgomeister" means "master of the citizens".
A Burgermeister is chairman of the executive council (or cabinet) in many towns and cities in Germany. In France, the person is called a "maire". In the Netherlands the person is called the "burgemeester". The title is usually translated into English as "Mayor", but the position of mayor is not quite the same as the Burgermeister.
"Ober-" is put in front of many title to show that it is higher than another, especially in military.
Area codes in Germany
Area codes in Germany () for telephones have two to five digits, not counting the first zero. The first or "leading" zero must be dialled when calling from inside Germany and not when calling from outside Germany. The area code is not needed when dialling another telephone in the same area, unless one of the telephones is a mobile phone. Usually shorter area codes are used by larger cities, and longer area codes to smaller towns.
The first digit (after the leading zero) shows the region:
(0)1 are special numbers such as mobile phones (015, 016, 017), shared cost service (0180), televoting numbers (013) and 010 for dial-around services. The OLD codes 0130 for free phone numbers and 0190 for premium-rate numbers are now moved to 0800 and 0900 to meet international standards.
German automobile number plates