Like Christiane Charette, I love live broadcasts. Everybody talks about it, Zenith, Live from the universe, Good evening ! or the confused finale ofDouble occupancy Andalusialive broadcast brings an excitement and urgency that is not felt in a pre-recorded and formatted program to fill a specific time slot.
Live, a lot of unpredictable and surprising things happen, ranging from an alligator on the loose to The week of the 4 Julies to Jano Bergeron who massacres the song I Drove All Night by Celine Dion at the end of the course, Zenith.
You have to be in front of your station to experience the surprise or discomfort generated by the live broadcast. The effect fades as it catches up, I find. Normally, The voice would appear in the list of essential live broadcasts. But not anymore. In its reduced format, TVA’s musical tele-hook no longer subjects its competitors to the “live” test, to paraphrase our French comrades at The Voicewho also love “super cross battles”, sigh.
Starting on Sunday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m., a group of 101 people in the studio will determine the winners of the competition, until the big coronation. These 101 one-night judges did not attend any other recordings of The voice this season and have no family or friendly ties to the finalists. They only base themselves on artistic performances to rate singers.
British and Australian versions of The Voice Or The Voice Kids operate with this jury of 101 people, which eradicates any attempt to “package” the public vote. Also, the 101 jury neutralizes the candidates who arrive at The voice with tens of thousands of subscribers on TikTok or Instagram, a considerable profit when the popular vote begins.
The biggest disadvantage of The voice of 2024, reworked with shrunken budgets, it is the withdrawal of all portions presented live. All the episodes have already been filmed, even the finale, which was recorded before Christmas. Let’s say that alters the suspense.
The new qualifying stage, deployed on Sunday evening, went smoothly. Three numbers per team, we keep the best, we remove the other two, thank you, ciao. And a good idea to atrophy the time allocated to the comments of the four coaches. At this point in the tournament, we’ve had plenty of time to hear that so-and-so’s voice is like “melting chocolate that we should sell at Easter”, thank you.
In the France D’Amour team, the triumph of Maude Cyr-Deschênes, 24, was resounding and unequivocal. His resumption of Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler eclipsed the passage of her comrades Ange-Élie Ménard, 17, and Alexis Bouchard-Leblond, 23. She has a little something of Mari-Jo Thério, this Maude. Honestly interesting.
At Mario Pelchat, I would have kept Dan Daraîche, 32 years old, the son of the legendary Paul Daraîche, in play, because he improves every Sunday and he has won the hearts of viewers. I preferred his rereading, on drums, of My blues can’t pass through the door to the fairly generic interpretation of I blame myself by Mélanie Renaud by Priscilla Findlay, 30 years old, whom Mario Pelchat drafted. Katy Vachon, 43, had no luck tackling the classic A woman with you by Nicole Croisille, which she distorted.
On the side of Corneille, very disappointed with the departure of Jana Salameh, 22 years old, amazing on I love you by Lara Fabian, bossa nova style and mixed with the piece Alf Leila Wa Leila, in Arabic. Corneille opted for Leticia Jimenez, 19, who revisited Como La Flor by Mexican-American singer Selena. Leticia has already done The junior voice in 2019 and The Voice Kidsin France, in 2019.
Then, Roxane Bruneau had to decide between Andrew, 24, and Jonathan Houde, 23, who offered two solid numbers. The first on Oxygen by Diane Dufresne. The second on Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi. There coach has kept his “popstar” Jonathan, who will however have to work on his pronunciation of words in English, which is difficult to listen to. Rosemarie Gauthier, 25, was no match for the shy ballad Torn by Natalie Imbruglia.
The women dominated this first round of qualifying and were able to sip a Nescafé Gold espresso martini in front of a wall plastered with the Videotron logo.
I open a digression on the garish sponsorship on Quebec television. Yes, the networks are scraping the bottom line and integrating products to soften the bills, that’s understandable. You have to survive in these lean times.
But there are surely more subtle – and less aggressive, for us – ways to please advertisers. In Big Brother Celebrities, the Natrel coffee and creamer integrations are annoying. Same thing for the Randolph fun ad plogue: it’s useless and not necessary to the story.
The prize for strangest product placement still goes to reality TV Get me out of here!, who managed to add a Proxi convenience store to his episodes. I repeat: there is a Proxi convenience store in the lush jungle of Panama.
IMAGE FROM THE SHOW GET ME OUT OF HERE!
Incredible, but true: there is a Proxi convenience store in the lush jungle of Panama!
There’s a publicist who has obviously abused ayahuasca, or been bitten by a poisonous spider, get him out of there, before he convinces Salvatoré pizzerias to come on board Get me out of here!. Oops, too late.