Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Kelly Clarkson uses her save on Rod Stokes, to Adam Levine’s delight on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

Two nights of cross battles haven’t changed my opinion of the latest wrinkle introduced by The Voice.

They’re a potentially entertaining and interesting twist to the competition — not necessarily better than the old knockouts, just more gimmicky.

They are better than the battle rounds. Sorry, but those duets never have been and never will be all that helpful in distinguishing the show’s most worthy voice.

In future seasons, I’d like to see The Voice makes the old knockouts the second round of the competition and the new cross battles the third.

But the cross battles need lots and lots of tweaking if they’re going to stay.

As for Season 16 … To mix metaphors, the cross battles are much ado for too little juice.

The Voice just spent two nights — three hours of airtime — to eliminate three contestants. At the cost of cutting out a week of this season’s finals.

That’s a silly trade off. And the show will repeat it again next week.

And while American Idol just wrapped up its ninth round of performances from its Top 14, we still haven’t seen a third performance from half of the Voice’s Top 32.

Both shows end the same week. Put simply: American Idol Season 17 is proving a much better showcase for emerging talent than The Voice Season 16.

Carson Daly, host and producer of The Voice, presides over the new cross battles. (NBC Photo)

* The cross battle voting platforms, both the app and on the website, are an absolute mess. Contestants are listed by team, with no indication of who battled whom. You had to scroll down and down some more to find Rob Stokes, who landed last alphabetically among the five Team Adam contestants who did battle Monday. Come on, The Voice. That’s piss poor planning. You had six weeks to get ready for this. I could take 10 minutes and do better on this site. And I’m not a techno whiz.

* All of the steals and all of the saves should be held until the end of the cross battles. That would better ensure they go to the most deserving contestants. I know The Voice has never done it that way. But this is a new format and a chance to make improvements, not retain bad habits from the past. The remaining 16 contestants head into the second week of cross battles at a big disadvantage: three steals and two saves are already gone; only three remain.

* On peformance night, there’s still way too much chatter from the coaches. Let’s hear from the coaches of the singers doing battle and no one else. In at least 50 percent of the cases, the non-involved coaches don’t reveal who they think won the match. And it’s not as though any of the coaches offer specific criticisms or suggestions. Make more time for music — more or longer performances — and devote less time to coach babble.

* Tuesday’s results show was a bloody mess. First, The Voice jumbled the results order, giving us those in an order different than the one in which the battles were presented Monday. Why? This show has twisted the rules and played favorites so often, I no longer trust any such shenanigans.

* The biggest problem though, was the show itself. We heard 16 coaches say what a shame it would be for their singers to be eliminated … even when they weren’t being eliminated. Again, way, way, way too much chatter from the coaches. Remember, this is supposed to be a singing show. In an hour of TV time, we saw one musical performance. Just one.

But, hey, this is The Voice.

Silly Season 16 style.