Comments on: NBC’s ‘The Voice’ ratings debate: Is Blake Shelton’s popularity bad for the show?

By: David Perkins

David Perkins — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:55:00 +0000

I’m not a country music fan, per se, but I don’t buy the premise that “most of the people who want to spend money (on iTunes) are Blake fans.” It’s absurd. There’s no evidence that only fans of Blake are willing to spend money on iTunes. Two weeks ago, Michelle Chamuel beat everyone in iTunes sales. Why? People simply preferred Michelle’s version of Taylor Swift’s ”I Knew You Were Trouble’ to anything else that week. With the right song choice, the any contestant can dominate iTunes sales. I don’t think the show needs any changes at all. Yes, perhaps country singers have an advantage right now. And yes, perhaps Blake Shelton draws millions of viewers to the show each week. And yes, perhaps the other coaches need to help their talent pick songs (in the way Michelle did) that would dominate the iTunes charts. To suggest that country music or Blake should be handicapped in some way to make an even playing field is nuts.

By: BlownAwayBy Danielle

BlownAwayBy Danielle — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:47:00 +0000

The other coaches need to learn from Blake. Contrast Blake and Adam.

Adam coaches as if he is a gymnastics coach, and his artists are going to perform in front of a small panel of “expert” judges to be judged on “technical proficiency”. Wrong event and the wrong strategy.

Blake understands making his contestants better artists is part of his job and an important ingredient in winning. But he also gets it that this is a popularity contest and his job is part record producer, marketing executive and campaign manager.

To his credit, Usher figured this out when he broke out the Michelle glasses, then got Taylor Swift to appear during her practice enabling Michelle to beat Danielle in itunes sales her only time. Nothing is going to make a cover of a popular contemporary artist sell like the endorsement of the artist. I expect another similar big PR stunt from Usher this week. Like a Justin Bieber appearance or something.

Meanwhile, Team Adam has gone home already.

By: ccitizen60

ccitizen60 — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 22:31:00 +0000

Blake does a better job helping his contestants find the right songs producing those break through moments when the viewers start to connect with the singers as interesting, likable people not just as vocalists (e.g. Swon Brothers with “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes”). And have you noticed how Blake often focuses his comments on his contestants as people rather than just singers? Usher seems to have noticed. Early in the season Usher’s coaching, while remarkably creative, focused on the vocals and showmanship. Finally with Michelle he started shifting some of the focus on the artist as a person, which seems to be working. Adam on the other hand, though obviously a dedicated coach, doesn’t seem to pick up on the importance of the personal connection. I was very impressed with Judith’s vocal ability but never had any sense about her as a remarkable or interesting person. And in one of her performances the lights, dancers and over the top hair style swamped even her remarkable vocal talent. If Adam takes a page from Blake’s mentoring book and continues to get the vocal horsepower on his team in the future he’ll be hard for Blake or anyone else to beat.

In a related note Blake takes a lot of good natured jabs from Adam and others, at least one would hope they are good natured, but anyone who fails understand that he is a caring, thoughtful and intelligent coach is obviously underestimating him and setting themselves up to come in second or worse.

By: bee

bee — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:17:00 +0000

I don’t think it is much on Blake being popular, but really on Blake being a smart ass on making strategies and stuff. As you can see, Usher is now studying his moves and getting better by choosing the right songs, playing with the audience through social media, overpraising his contestant, having the #4eyesontheprize campaign and even getting Taylor Swift to go to rehearsal and tweet about his contestant (what a strategy! it landed on Top 10 on Itunes). Heck, Michelle Chamuel might even with this getting the non-country votes!

Obviously, country artist will pick Blake, because he is a country artist – just like Monique Abbadie picking Shakira because she’s her idol. Blake is really popular on Country, but for me, Adam, Shakira, and Usher are way more popular than Blake. Ohh and I am a hardcore country fan at that, but can still admit this.

By: Emmy

Emmy — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:16:00 +0000

In reply to lsbloom. This is absolutely right!!! The unbalanced teams this year are the root of the problems! Adam's team after the blinds was extremely strong that they alone could've been the top 10. MIDAS WHALE did not deserve to be booted off so early. Caroline Glaser had a lot of life left in her. Warren Stone had the potential to do some interesting crossover material. The list goes on... Unfortunately for Shakira and Usher, they lost out to the strongest contenders each and every time during the blind auditions because no one wanted to pick them. As much as I like Shakira and Usher, it will be an absolute blessing to have Christina and Cee-Lo back on the show. At least they had as much power among contestants that they could provide some kind of balance.

By: lsbloom

lsbloom — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:28:00 +0000

Itunes is a vastly smaller voting pool than online and phone–it’s only the people who want to pay and unless you get in the top ten it is only one vote vs up to 10 on the other methods. It just happens that it is a publicly available way to monitor voting. We can see it and since it is the most rarefied vote it is pretty indicative of all the other voting methods. Saying get rid of itunes is just saying make the voting less transparent. It isn’t going to change who does well. Plus the cumulative count is a darn good method of ensuring that commercially viable people win. Look at last season’s top three, they each have a single and in the last week+ showed up on The Voice to promote: Cassadee has the most sales, then Terry (although his single is a few months old and he already charted with it once with his core fans and he doesn’t have a record company promoting him), then Nicholas…just like the voting, and just like you would expect. Cassadee is the most generally popular artist and then they get progressively more niche.

Instead of getting rid of Blake, maybe the contestants should recognize his voting block power and start picking him over “king of the 4 chair turn” Adam who is only going to send them home in the battles and knockouts (and then with horrible song choices and generally bad coaching). Shakira started to play like Blake half way through and she got better. People have really responded to quirky artists. The problem this year was just really unbalanced teams coming out of the blind auditions: Adam had all the power and the only people who’d pick Blake were country and Shakira and Usher mopped up the rest.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:49:00 +0000

I agree with your point that, one way or the other, they need to even the playing field. The next thing that I expect to happen is that the show will become more and more “country”, Artists of other genres will begin to avoid The Voice and will try out for other shows perceived to have less of a country slant. Other judges on the show will select more and more country artists. The show will then be limited to a mostly niche audience. Not good.

By: Dennis Wilson

Dennis Wilson — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:21:00 +0000

BETTER STILL…..WHY NOT TAP INTO THE CANADIAN VOTE;….we have watched this show since its inception…love it…but so frustrated that we cannot vote…maybe that would level the playing field somewhat but I think it has tons to do with coaching…Adam seldom tapped into the hot country thing this year and it cost him big time…..” Midas Whale” quit complaining here…probably wont do me any good….just sayin