What a fiasco! The voting glitch that hit The Voice SA finale on Sunday night totally emphasised the problems with the format that characterised the final stages of the competition.
The glitch struck during the final performances of the Top 4 as they performed their final showdown. Voting lines were supposed to run throughout their performances but things erupted in chaos minutes after the voting opened when viewers started getting 404 error codes and couldn’t access the online voting platforms when they tried to vote for their favourite.
At the end of the finale, just before the announcement of the winner, viewers were told that the night’s votes wouldn’t be included in the final decision and that the competition would use the votes cast up until Thursday (19 May) as the deciding factor.
And it aaaaaaaaaaaall could have been avoided if the Top 4 had simply been chosen and announced the week before. Having a Top 8 who had to be narrowed down to a Top 4 during the finale was so ridiculously complicated it was inevitable that something would go wrong.
The Top 4 should have been announced at the end of the penultimate episode and voting lines should have run throughout the week, up until the finale. This would have been the most efficient and fairest way of doing things because the hour of voting during the finale wasn’t even fair.
Jeremy Olivier, who performed first, had the biggest advantage of everyone and Gavin Edwards, who performed last, was at the greatest disadvantage. By the time he sang there were only about three minutes left to vote so viewers had no time to cast their votes for him.
So ultimately things worked out more fairly in the end but
not because they were supposed to. If there’s another season - and it's sounding likely that there will be - the show’s going to need to take a serious look at the format.
Besides the Top 8 situation, I was also
very iffy about the fact that every coach had to have someone in the final. Why?! The only explanation I can think of is that the coaches would be offended if they weren't all represented in the finale.
It shouldn’t matter which coaches make it to the end - the whole Top 4 should be able to come from the same coach and tough luck on the others.
The fact that this wasn’t an option means that there’s a strong probability that contestants could have been disadvantaged e.g. if two of the Top 8 from the same team got the highest number of votes out of everyone, one of them would have had to go, which means the Top 4 might not actually have been the Top 4.
According to M-Net, the voting results are being released shortly so it’s going to be interesting to see what they reveal. I’m not sure if they’re going to be for Top 4 only or for across the competition like they do for Idols - will keep you posted.
In the meantime, this is the statement by M-Net about the voting glitch which they issued at a press conference after the finale:
There was a massive number of votes coming through on our voting platforms and as you know, we are a responsible broadcaster and we are always very transparent about what’s going on on our voting platforms. We work with our auditors as well to make sure that the results are fair so because of this we decided to go back to what the results were at the close of voting lines on Thursday night and that was as per the terms and conditions.
If you go into the terms and conditions, it clearly says that if there are any technical issues, then we will go back to the previous vote. Just to be sure that you’re absolutely clear on that, tonight’s votes would have been added to this week’s votes.