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Nine needs to hear The Voice of reason

20th May, 2014
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Hey, have I got a hot take for you... (Image: AAP)
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20th May, 2014
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Could you imagine Kylie Minogue, during a particularly engaging segment of The Voice in which a contestant is knocking Rolling in the Deep out of the park, interrupting the performance to ask fellow coach will.i.am, “What do you make of the Blues’ chances in Origin 1?”

How about Simon Baker breaking the fourth wall just as The Mentalist‘s screenwriters are about to reveal who Red John is, dropping out of character to look straight down the lens and announce Thursday’s guest hosts on The Footy Show.

Or Sheldon and Blossom interrupting “the kiss that stopped a nation” on The Big Bang Theory to discuss how much they love the verbal interplay between Ray Warren and Phil Gould on Friday Night Football?

Actually, could you imagine anyone having that conversation?

All of these unlikely scenarios crossed my mind sometime around 10pm on Friday night when I was living through my own unlikely scenario – watching elite professional sport on delay in the early 21st Century.

As the Brisbane Broncos launched an attacking raid in the Gold Coast Titans’ end of the field during the evenly poised contest, Ray Hadley and the commentary team turned their attention to the pressing issue of Sunday night’s episode of The Voice. While this could’ve been handled via some brief lip service as the advertising banner appeared on the screen, Hadley instead engaged Gould in a discussion on which coach’s hand hovered over the buzzer in the most entertaining fashion.

Ricky Martin was the winner for those of you reading this who care, which I suspect is a similar figure to the number of New South Wales fans sad to see the back of Mitchell Pearce.

I’ve kindly shortlisted a number of more effective, less alienating ways than the above in which the Nine Network could market their flagship reality television product.

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1. Door-to-door salespeople.
2. Cold call households at dinner time.
3. Drive through the streets with a loud hailer like Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers.
4. Send some student interns to the ABC to drop a banner behind Tony Jones and the Q&A panel.
5. Sponsor the Federal Budget announcement. You could even have the coaches up in the press gallery in their swivel chairs, ready to hit the red button and spin around if a new ‘not a new tax’ takes their fancy.
6. Capture gangs of disaffected suburban youths and take them to small cinemas, where they’re straitjacketed and strapped to a chair with their eyelids clamped open as re-runs of The Voice blind auditions play ad infinitum.
7. Telepathy.

Or perhaps even a tasteful watermark of The Voice logo sitting in the corner of the screen for the entirety of the broadcast, a clock counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the next episode airs, might be a wiser strategy.

Channel Nine’s marketing types would no doubt point to my intimate knowledge of their programming schedule and be patting each other on the backs as they hop in their Maseratis, smug in the knowledge that they’ve hit another set of eyeballs without resorting to the Ludovico technique.

But is there any real value in force-feeding an audience something they’re not necessarily interested in when the focus should be on what they love? Some analyst has no doubt developed an algorithm which can determine just that, though I’d argue that the psyche of your average rugby league fan is more difficult to penetrate than advanced calculus.

What I do know is that rugby league commentators attempting to casually wax lyrical on entertainment programming is embarrassing for everyone involved.

And if Channel Nine must serve our NRL with a side helping of The Voice, at least get Dave Grohl in a coach’s swivel chair so we have a band worth watching come grand final day.

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