NBC’s ‘The Voice’ season 8: No big changes, but expect more original songs

While we are still in the very early stages of “The Voice” season 8, it is apparently never too early to start talking about what could at least be a few proposed changes for the future.

So what will be different this season? Not a whole lot, since the network apparently likes the schedule as it is. The bad news is that means there isn’t a whole lot of serious consideration to expanding the live rounds. That’s a shame, since you lose so many great singers so soon. What NBC seems to be most interested in is increasing social interaction, and based on what the network’s alternative programming head Paul Telegdy had to say in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, a big part of that is going to be continuing to emphasize wild cards, and original songs like we saw in the finale:

“…[The wild card] worked well. That drove a huge amount of social chatter and engagement. It was a bit of an obvious one horse, two horse race [last season], so we’re looking athow to make that more exciting for the viewer. The other thing that worked phenomenally well that we weren’t expecting to work, was the original songs we did in the finale. All three of the top 3’s records were major sensations. They were perfect for them, and elaborately woven kind of stories for the individual contestants. That’s something we’re going to amplify. I don’t know where in the competition, because can you imagine finding 12 amazing songs or six amazing songs [for multiple weeks]?”

Someday, our dream would be to change the Battle Rounds to something shorter and different, which would in turn give us an extra week of live shows. Alas, we just don’t see that happening.

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