NBC’s ‘The Voice’ season 5: Awful new twist allows for ‘instant’ voting on Twitter
Hear that in the distance? It’s the sound of “The Voice” trying to be clever when they really do not have to be.
For the upcoming live shows, NBC is introducing a brand-new twist into the mix seemingly designed with one goal in mind: Implementing a way that Twitter can be used to save an artist in jeopardy at the end of a results show. This is being called the “instant save,” and it feels suspiciously like a more-unfair version of the flash vote that was on “The X Factor” UK earlier this current season.
The way this voting system is going to work is that once the bottom three singers are announced, America will choose to save one of the artists rather than the coaches in a five-minute window using the hashtag #VoiceSave along with saying the name of the artist that they want to keep in the competition for a little bit longer.
Here is the rub with that. On “The X Factor,” at least Britain did not have a situation where there were major differences in time zones. If you want to vote to save your favorite artist on Twitter in America and you’re in California, you basically have to go on Twitter, spoil the results show for yourself, and then sit there and vote while you are probably doing other things. Who is going to do that? This seems to be completely biased towards artists who grew up in the eastern half of the country, and also their fans. We know that fans are worldwide, but for people who maybe have their hometowns voting for them, it could keep someone in the competition and cause someone else to be sent home.
Also, we still don’t like basically forcing someone to have a Twitter account in the first place just to have a say in the direction of the show. The internet can be a mean place, and maybe you like just calling or going to the website and voting anonymously.
So in the end, this is probably a cool twist to you if you like the Virtual Boy … or New Coke … or “RoboCop 3.” It’s something unnecessary that dilutes everything that came before it.
You can see who made it into the top 12 along with some analysis over at the link here. We’ll have more in our full review of “The Voice”
Photo: NBC