TV News: Syfy's OPPOSITE WORLDS Gets A Host - Luke Tipple

In a press release:

LUKE TIPPLE TO HOST SYFY’S OPPOSITE WORLDS

Past vs. Future Reality Competition Series to Air Tuesdays and LIVE Wednesdays at 10pm,

Premiering January 21

Renowned Georgetown University Social Media Expert Kalev Leetaru To Track And Analyze Viewer Tweets

Unique Interactive Social Experiment Calls On Viewer Participation To Influence On-Screen Competition

NEW YORK – January 9, 2014 – Syfy today announced that Luke Tipple (Capture) will host Opposite Worlds, an all-new reality competition series and social experiment produced by Eyeworks USA. Set to premiere January 21, Opposite Worlds will run for 12 episodes over six weeks (two episodes per week), with a live episode every Wednesday night (a first for a Syfy reality series). Opposite Worlds is based on the hit Chilean format, Mundos Opuestos, originally broadcast on Canal 13 and distributed by Banijay International.

In Opposite Worlds, 14 people from all walks of life go head-to-head in opposing teams that live in a house separated into two distinctly different worlds: one future and one past, each with its own unique advantages and disadvantages. Adding to the drama is a glass wall dividing the house into the two environments, allowing the teams to watch, envy and dread each other’s every move. Viewers can contribute to the chatter about Opposite Worlds – and affect each weekly challenge – by following the handle @syfyoppworlds and using the hashtag #oppositeworlds on Twitter.

Every week, as cast members compete in a series of fast-paced challenges, viewers will be asked to participate in real time on social media and affect the outcome of each player’s fate. To track and measure this social activity, renowned researcher Kalev H. Leetaru, a fellow and adjunct faculty at Georgetown University, will utilize cutting edge approaches to measure the Twitter “social sentiment” around the contestants on the show, determining who is most and least popular among viewers each week. This unique social experiment will unveil the effects that Twitter can have and allows consumer opinions on social media to directly impact the show.

In addition, Syfy.com will serve as an interactivity hub for the show, offering up opportunities to vote on various elements of the competition (such as rewards and punishments for the most popular and least popular players, and to give players special abilities to heavily impact the game). The outcomes of this viewer interactivity will be incorporated into the show each week, giving viewers the opportunity to affect the outcome of each weekly challenge and in turn, who eventually emerges as victor.

Opposite Worlds will be executive produced by JD Roth, Todd A. Nelson, Brant Pinvidic, Adam Kaloustian and Curtis Colden for Eyeworks USA.

About Luke Tipple

Luke Tipple is a television personality and award-winning producer. He has hosted television series for the CW (Capture), and is regularly featured on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, Nat Geo and History Channel among others. As an executive producer, he produced and starred in several national commercials including the Discovery Channel/VW Shark Week Campaigns in 2012 & 13 which won awards at Cannes as well as 6 Gold and 2 Silver Addys. Born and raised in Adelaide, Australia, his travels have taken him around the globe. As a marine biologist and adventure guide he’s come face-to-face with some of the world’s most dangerous predators, and survived. He’s one of the pioneers of out-of-cage experiences with Great White Sharks and his international conservation and policy work has been recognized for outstanding contribution by the Humane Society of the United States. Tipple is represented by Rebel Entertainment Partners and Braverman/Bloom Co.

About Kalev H. Leetaru

Leetaru is currently the Yahoo! Fellow in Residence of International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet at Georgetown University. He helps lead the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), the largest open database of human society, an archive of over a quarter-billion human events compiled from computer processing a quarter-century of the world’s news. His award-winning work centers on the pioneering application of the world’s largest supercomputers, datasets, and algorithms towards understanding human society at scales never before imagined and in ways that push the boundaries of computing and give us new insights into what makes us human. His Global Twitter Heartbeat collaboration was the first to map large-scale emotion in social media in realtime and was recently ranked one of the top social media studies of 2013. Most recently he was named as one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013 for his work as one of the foremost leaders in using big data to understand human society.