March Makeovers: Can NBC’s ‘The Voice’ find better use for Battle Rounds?

For the most part, “The Voice” is a really great bit of reality television that does what it does very well: Create compelling, interesting television that features some great talent. We could create an entirely different article about what happens after the show and all of the problems there, but the reality here is that the show doesn’t have much jurisdiction on that.

So instead, what can be done to fix the show itself? There is one clear problem that we can think of right off the top of our head, and it has a thing or two to do with the Battle Rounds. It’s by far the worst part of the show, it always leads to viewers going away, and it wastes a lot of time with filler. Therefore, this is the latest chapter of our daily March Makeovers article series.

The biggest problem – It’s the formula. The whole “celebrity adviser” right now is useless filler that really doesn’t help the show much at all. Meanwhile, it’s not exactly a closely-guarded secret that the coaches really aren’t around through most of the process. Also, a battle on the show sometimes lasts 20 minutes, which is so ridiculous given that the performance itself maybe just lasts for two or three. We’re not sure we’ve ever learned anything that valuable in these lengthy segments.

How to fix it – We’d rather just see the show not pretend, and make things more about the artists than the coaches. Let them choose their song, and show how they go about everything from picking a song to the arrangement. Rather than just having them stand there and perform in front of the coaches / the adviser, show a more collaborative process where they talk about song choice and the staging.

Also, get rid of the duets, and make this more like the knockout rounds. Duets are unnatural, and always screw over a few singers a season. Also, cutting out duets makes it at least more understandable that these segments last so long. In the end our main hope is to put the power back in the artist’s hands, have them give the best presentation of themselves vocally, and also tell viewers more of who they are. We already know the coaches at this point.

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