The regional preliminaries were followed by a weekly broadcast knockout competition held in Changsha, Hunan province. Viewers called in to vote for their favourite singers, and the weakest two—as voted by the judges and the audience's weekly SMS— faced-off subsequently in a "PK", short for "Player Kill". The term is derived from kill-or-be-killed multiplayer online games. The singer with the fewest votes was then eliminated. Unlike "Pop Idol", the last event was contested between the final three, rather than the final two contestants.