Idol Chatter & Voice Views

In a long overdue move, The Voice is cutting back to one season during the 2021-22 television season.

The Voice will air Season 21 this fall, then take the spring off before presumably returning for Season 22 in the fall of 2022.

Said Frances Berwick, chairman, Entertainment Networks, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming: “Going into the 21st cycle in the fall, The Voice remains one of the most popular shows on television and we want to keep it that way.

“We want to eventize this iconic series. We think The Voice will be on NBC for a very long time to come and we believe the best way to protect the brand, while also super-serving fans is to produce one amazing cycle this year.”

Which sounds great, if The Voice intends to indeed produce “one amazing cycle this year.”

But let’s be clear. Once easily the best singing show on TV, The Voice is garbage in its current format.

Unless, of course, you’re just tuning in to watch four superstar coaches quarrel and tease each other like juvenile siblings.

The problem isn’t the talent. Once again in Season 20, The Voice rounded up a fine cast of singers.

The problem is the scaled-back format The Voice adopted in Season 16 and returned to for Seasons 18-20.

Take Season 20. In the first two months of the season, we saw each surviving contestant perform just three times.

Singers would perform, impress viewers with their talent, then disappear for a month at a time.

That’s no way to generate interest in contestants. On American Idol, viewers were seeing the top contestants perform every episode, week after week.

And with the scaled back number of live shows — just three — a singer can will win The Voice by taking the stage just seven times, including two in the season finale.

On Idol the winner will perform 18 times.

There are other systemic problems on The Voice.

The battle and knockout rounds are blatantly unfair because saves and steals have all been used before many contestants even take the stage.

And the instant save was long ago proven unfair to West Coast contestants because its conducted on East Coast time.

The Voice, of course, is aware of all that, and doesn’t care enough to fix it.

It does seem to think that throwing a mountain of money at Ariana Grande to join the coaching panel for Season 21 will bring viewers back.

But without a better format, it’s wasted money.

And without a better format, The Voice shouldn’t bother airing at all.