Season 1
The Voice South Africa is a South African reality singing competition based on the Dutch show The Voice of Holland created by John de Mol and Roel van Velzen, in which the four superstar judges also coach the contestants, with the winner receiving a recording deal.
Kahn Morbee, Lira, Karen Zoid and Bobby van Jaarsveld take their seats in the iconic red chairs as the judges and coaches of The Voice South Africa.
The Voice is the ultimate talent contest. A show in which the absolute key factor is talent. Real talent. There's no room for fly by nights or wannabe stars. Only the very best of the best will do; the best voice combined with the best mentality, that's what the show is all about.
The Voice comprises three phases: Once the best singers are identified at the countrywide open auditions, they go through to the Blind Audition phase, where four coaches – all professional recording artists in their own right – listen to them sing without actually seeing them.
If a coach is interested in a singer, they push a button that swivels their chair around to face the contestant. If more than one coach turns their chair, the contestant has the opportunity to pick which coach they'd prefer to work with.
Once all of the coaches have a set amount of singers in their teams, the show moves onto the Battle Rounds, where each coach pairs two of their contestants up to perform together, and then chooses only one to go through to the next round.
The last phase is the Live Shows, where the remaining contestants sing for the public's votes, until one singer is officially named the winner of The Voice South Africa.
Blind Auditions
Hundreds of hopeful singers auditioned for The Voice SA's producers and talent scouts in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg in 2015, and also in videos that they uploaded to the official website.
Just over 100 of the finest of those voices were chosen to audition for the four coaches in "Blind" auditions, in which the coaches sit with their backs turned to the talent, so that they can solely base their decisions on the quality of The Voice.
If one coach turns their chair around before the end of the audition, the talent is automatically placed in that coach's team. If more than one coach turns, the talent is then able to choose which coach they want to work with. During the Blind audition episodes, each coach builds a team of 14 singers.
Battle Rounds
The four teams of 14 contestants each (56 contestants in total) then progress through to the Battle rounds, in which each coach pits their singers against each other in pairs.
At the end of each Battle, the coach has to decide which of the two contestants has performed well enough to continue on their The Voice SA journey, and which has to be sent home.
At this stage each coach has a "Steal" available to them too, which means that each coach has one chance to "steal" one of their fellow coaches' eliminated contestants over to their team.
The Battle rounds run over the course of four episodes. These episodes are two hours in duration, meaning that they will air from 17h00 – 19h00 every Sunday night.
The Live Shows
The remaining episodes are broadcast live from Johannesburg, and it is down to the public to vote for who they want to progress in the series.
The result of each voting period is announced at the beginning of the following week's episode, and these shows are also two hours in duration. There are a total of six live shows, including the grand finale on Sunday, 22 May 2016, where the winner will be announced.
Season 1 is produced for M-Net by AMPN, with Glenn van Loggerenberg serving as executive producer. The series producer is Debby Schulman and the series director is Darren Hayward. The music director is James Bassingthwaite.
Winner
Richard Stirton
Broadcast Notes
Season 1 originally aired on M-Net City on Saturdays at 18h00 following the Sunday broadcast on M-Net. Once the live shows began (with viewer voting), M-Net City began broadcasting on Mondays at 19h30, beginning with Episode 12 on Monday 18 April. The finale aired simultaneously with M-Net, to enable viewer voting on M-Net City.