Election week isn’t always easy for the broadcast networks — just look at Monday night’s episode of “The Voice.”
Usually, when the show gets down to the Top 20 singers — the “playoff” round — three dedicated episodes feature all 20 performances, as well as the results. This season, because the presidential election took over the TV schedule this week, NBC decided to cut the live playoffs to a single, two-hour episode on Monday night — complete with real-time voting, whittling 20 singers to 12.
Those familiar with reality TV singing competitions might be thinking, “Wow, 20 performances in two hours sounds like a lot.” Indeed it was! The show felt incredibly rushed, which didn’t sit well with some viewers. But the bigger problem — according to a flood of social media comments — was that the West Coast didn’t get to vote for the Top 12 singers. The “instant results” were revealed after the real-time voting during the East Coast telecast, and those watching the Pacific time zone broadcast couldn’t participate.
A scroll through Twitter and “The Voice” Facebook page shows that certain West Coast viewers weren’t happy about this development, though others were confused by the voting process in general. Host Carson Daly explained that to vote you could either download the official “Voice” app or retweet “The Voice” Twitter account, which would send out one tweet per artist. So theoretically, the West Coast could vote if they were following along online earlier … they just couldn’t actually see any of the performances.
