How Channel 7 will change The Voice and cast new coaches
Channel 7 has revealed its coronavirus-centric reasoning for poaching The Voice from rival Nine — as the rest of Australia’s reality TV roster radically rethinks how make shows will make it to air in time for next year.
Entertainment
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Channel 7 says it nabbed The Voice from rival Nine to secure guaranteed content in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The poaching comes as Australian TV scramble to get their program slates in place for 2021 at a time when many productions have been delayed or scrapped altogether.
Australia’s Got Talent has been spiked, The Amazing Race Australia will be delayed, and
Married at First Sight and I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! will need radical rethinks to make it to air at the start of next year.
“We are shoring up our content pipeline under very difficult and unpredictable production
conditions,” Seven program chief Angus Ross told Confidential.
“The chance to develop The Voice to be relevant for 2021 was just too good to pass up.”
The added bonus for Seven is that it creates a huge black hole in Nine’s 2021 schedule at the
worst possible time to find a replacement.
Seven plans to more than halve The Voice’s bloated $40 million budget by stripping the format of the Battle Rounds and Play-Offs.
Filming will be done over a much shorter period — weeks instead of months — so that Seven has what Ross calls “a reduced production financial commitment.”
Media analyst Steve Allen said coronavirus and cost will likely mean The Voice casts three local and one international coach to fill the turning chairs.
“The first thing Seven needs to do is strip a large amount of cost out of the show,” Allen said. “In the past, the international judges made up a large part of the budget.”
He added: “With COVID, the show will go largely local, but they need some international flavour to add credibility and status to the show.”
Seven is yet to announce the coaches, but industry chatter suggests Kylie Minogue, Jessica Mauboy, Ricki-Lee Coulter and The Veronicas will be considered.
Minogue coached on The Voice Australia in 2014. Mauboy, Coulter and The Veronicas have been mentors on the show.
Allen said poaching The Voice is a coup for Seven. “It’s a positive and exciting format, and audiences still want that.”
Meanwhile, coronavirus has already impacted Ten’s The Masked Singer and Nine’s Hot Seat. The Chase Australia moved from Melbourne to Sydney to try to kickstart filming. And I’m A Celebrity will relocate from South Africa to New South Wales.
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