Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Voice coaches Adam Levine, Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Lopez and Blake Shelton. Jennifer will be replaced by John Legend in Season 16, but that’s not the biggest planned change. (NBC Photo)

The Voice will be back in just two months.

In fact, Season 16 will kick off on Monday, Feb. 25, with the blind auditions continuing the next night.

But that Tuesday, Feb. 26 episode will be the last Tuesday episode of The Voice for nearly two months.

The show won’t return on Tuesday nights until April 23, according to reporting from TV Line.

What does that mean?

Well, unless The Voice begins airing three-hour episodes on Monday night, it means fewer hours of airtime spent on the blind auditions, the battle round and the knockout round.

And as someone who has followed The Voice for all 15 of its seasons, my immediate fear is that fewer hours of airtime will lead to more of those dreaded montages. You know, those clips where about 10 seconds of airtime is all a contestant gets.

The biggest improvement The Voice made in Season 15 — there were lots of gimmicks, but very few improvements — was the elimination of montages in the blind auditions.

In Season 15, for the first time I can remember, we were introduced to every one of the 48 artists who made the show. Sure, some of the bio packages were a bit abbreviated, but we got to see each and every blind audition. Which is precisely what should happen.

In my mind, that made it far less objectionable when six battle round matches were montaged — including, interestingly, those involving Kirk Jay, Kennedy Holmes and Chevel Shepherd.

Eliminate the Tuesday shows, and The Voice will have two options: Tighten its editing or montage more performances.

The editing could certainly be tightened, especially in the battle and knockout rounds, where the show spends 20 minutes of airtime per performance.

But my hunch is the show will montage more performances.

And then, the question becomes: How will that impact the show’s ability to recruit contestants?

This should not come as a surprise: The contestants hate to be montaged. Many have gone on the record in this blog regarding their disdain over having their airtime on the show reduced to a few seconds.

And it’s natural that they’d feel that way. The big advantage of appearing on The Voice for an artist is to raise his or her profile.

No airtime equals no advantage to appearing on the show.

And with no advantage to appearing on the show, what serious musician would essentially put their career on hold for the uncertainty of what might happen on The Voice or the whims of its producers?

Understand, auditioning for The Voice is not a quick and easy process. Here’s a blog where Season 13 contestant Natalie Stovall talks about that process. Bottom line: Contestants spend nearly a month preparing for that 90-second to two-minute blind audition.

So, expect lots of changes on The Voice Season 16.

I wish I could be optimistic, but history has shown that change on this show is seldom for the better.