The Voice host Carson Daly is admitting in a new interview that he never thought the singing competition series would last. The reality TV show made its debut in the spring of 2011 with coaches Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera and CeeLo Green. The series was imported from Holland, where it was called The Voice of Holland. The United States version launched in the fall of 2011, which means executive producer Mark Burnett worked fast to bring it to the United States. While singing competition shows weren't a new concept in the U.S., The Voice introduced new gimmicks to the well-worn genre, like the Blind Auditions and spinning red chairs.
Javier Colon won the very first season with Levine. The coaching lineup has changed quite a bit over the past 10 years, with various celebrity superstar singers like Usher, Gwen Stefani, Pharrell Williams, Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson coming and going. This spring, Nick Jonas returned alongside Shelton, Kelly Clarkson and John Legend. Cam Anthony won the milestone 20th season of The Voice, which marked Shelton's eighth win. The country music singer, who has been a coach every single season, holds the record for the most wins. Clarkson and Levine are tied for second, with three wins each.
In an interview with Gold Derby, Daly admitted that he didn't think The Voice would last. When asked if he ever envisioned the show making it to season 20, he exclaimed, "Never," before adding, "The truth is it was quite the opposite. People thought we were crazy. If you recall the landscape in television at that time, American Idol, by all accounts, was kind of rounding third heading for home after their monumental success. Yet there still seemed to be an appetite for singing competitions because X Factor was coming over from Europe, and FOX had done a big deal for that. When we got this format from Holland, we had a very small window of time to get it on NBC before X Factor." For context, Idol was in the middle of airing its 10th season at the time.
Daly went on to note that "it was just a quick internal decision that we think there's still a little more life in this genre of reality TV. Let's swing for the fences, and that was getting Mark Burnett. That was getting A-list coaches, not judges, having our mentorship spin on our format." The Voice host concluded by saying he "never thought we'd last; we barely thought we would survive."
The year that The Voice premiered in the United States, everything seemed to line up perfectly for the Burnett-produced reality show. The X Factor was supposed to be the new big singing competition show on the air, especially since it had Simon Cowell's name attached to it, both in front of and behind the camera; and, in fact, bringing The X Factor to the U.S. was the sole reason why Cowell left American Idol after nine seasons, so expectations were high. But since it wasn't expected to launch until the fall of 2011, NBC took advantage of that extra window of time and debuted The Voice in the spring of that year.
The Voice became the new shiny object of the reality TV world, so The X Factor seemed like more of an afterthought by the time fall came around. The gimmicks and big-name celebrity coaches on The Voice drew viewers in. NBC is hoping that more fans tune in to see new coach and pop superstar Ariana Grande when The Voice returns for season 21.
Source: Gold Derby
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June 10, 2021 at 12:19AM
