Ib ijonkbojats: {alltv} NBC's 'The Voice': It's not 'American Idol,' but hear them out

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

{alltv} NBC's 'The Voice': It's not 'American Idol,' but hear them out

NBC and "Survivor" creator, Mark Burnett, hope to steal your attention from FOX's "American Idol" and "The X Factor" with its singing competition, "The Voice," premiering on April 26.

"The format of this show is much different than any other show," its host Carson Daly says. "There's blind auditions in the beginning... There's the mentoring battle round, and then there's the live [rounds]. So the format itself of the show is very different."

The blind round: Based on the original show of the same name in Holland, which beat that country's "American Idol" and "X Factor" in the ratings, the show's blind auditions have the coaches (pop diva Christina Aguilera, Maroon 5's Adam Levine, funk singer Cee Lo Green, and country artist Blake Shelton) pick their teams, but there's a twist when more than one coach wants the same singer.

"They are judging solely on what they hear," says Burnett. "Does that voice move them as artists? And if more than one turns around, the power then shifts to the contestants. They get to choose which coach they will actually work with."

The battle rounds: Once the teams are chosen blindly, the real competition begins with the "battle episodes." The coaches will pit his or her singers against each other, then choose which contender moves on. Meanwhile, the coaches will use all the resources the show affords them, as well their own personal strengths and music contacts to mold their singers into stars.

"We will bring in writers and producers and people from our teams," says Aguilera. "From engineers, other artists that I love to co-write with and to work with. We will bring our A team to get involved, and I mean, I'm going to bat for these people, so I want to represent them well and for them to be proud of what I'm doing with them."

The live rounds: When the teams are lean and mean, they'll begin competing against singers from other teams in the live broadcast rounds. The TV audience decides which person from each team they want to send home and the coaches can either save them or let them go. In the final battle, four -- supposedly the best singers from each team -- are left standing to compete against each other for the title, a recording contract, and $100,000.

Have they piqued your interest? Will you make room for "The Voice"?