‘The Voice UK’ season 6 premiere date revealed by ITV

“The Voice UK” is making a pretty big change from BBC One over to ITV, and while we’re not sure precisely what that will end up meaning for the series just yet, we can go ahead and tell you one thing: When it is going to be premiering on the air.

Based on some recent announcements, the new batch of episodes will pick up starting on Saturday, January 7 at 8:00 p.m. local time, which is certainly something worthy of a celebration. After all, that’s not altogether far away at all! British networks don’t tend to announce premiere dates altogether far in advance, so it’s not all that surprising that ITV would choose to follow a fairly similar pattern now.

The first thing that is going to be different about the new show right away is that it marks an opportunity to be able to see Jennifer Hudson and Gavin Rosdale as coaches for the first time. The two are replacing Paloma Faith and Ricky Wilson on the show last year, who fulfilled the similar sort of coach archetype. Meanwhile, Sir Tom Jones is taking his own chair back from Boy George, who previously occupied it for the first several years of the competition. Will.i.am will be returning once more as a coach, and Emma Willis will also be back as the presenter.

We imagine that one of the other key differences this season is that with commercial breaks, we could see a few subtle shifts in structure. We know that in general we’d be more than happy to eliminate some of the middle stages of the competition and present more live shows, in addition to cutting down on the number of auditions who don’t make it through. Only give us one or two of those, at most, in an episode. If ITV tightens the wheels and gives us more of what we want, we’ll be very much happy.

For some other news when it comes to “The Voice UK,” be sure to head over to the link here. (Photo: ITV.)