The Voice on BBC1 has to be good. I mean, the meeja god Simon Cowell has ordered that ITV re-schedule his ITV1 Britain’s Got Talent show to start once The Voice has finished instead of clashing. That’s got to mean something, right?
But is The Voice fair?
Phase one is the ‘blind’ auditions. This is when singers have 90 seconds to sing to the backs of the chairs of the four potential mentors. If a potential mentor wants the singer on their team, the chair turns around.
Ok, it’s fair that the singers are judged on their voice only and not on their looks. I like that idea.
However, during the ‘blind’ audition phase each mentor has to build a team of ten singers from the auditionees.
Now, it seems to me that those who get to sing first, have a better chance of getting selected than those that are coming on stage last. When each mentor has only a few singers in their team, the current singer has a one in four, fairly relaxed chance of being wanted by at least one of the mentors. However, later in the competition, as the mentors have nearly reached their tenth singer they are being more cautious about who they turn round to. Even factors like not ‘needing’ any more females will automatically count against the chances of the latter auditionees.
Worse still, when a couple of the mentors have their full complement of singers, this means they can no longer pick any more. Once again this restricts the potential facing the latter auditionees in the competition. When it’s down to one mentor remaining, and maybe he is only looking for a male, no matter how good the audition is, they stand no chance whatsoever.
Can this really be fair? I think not.
There needs to be a different way of doing it. Next season, it has to be fairer. Hey, ok, yes it’s a lot fairer than the audition stage of the X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent, because those who are absolutely crap are never put through on The Voice to experience the public humiliation that is the signature of the Simon Cowell version of the programming. With The Voice, the talentless are not conned into performing and to be laughed off stage.
So, yes, The Voice is fairer and certainly far more humane in many respects. But it needs to sort out a way to be more balanced during the blind auditions.
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