The Voice’ Votes: Will Coronavirus Affect Live Shows & Voting?

The Voice

Trae Patton/NBC

NBC’s hit singing competition The Voice has a winner chosen by live voting at the end of the long season. That may not be possible this year, however, due to the global coronavirus pandemic. There has not yet been an official announcement from the network about what will happen at the end of the pre-taped episodes.

Many television shows have had the rest of their seasons canceled or postponed due to the pandemic, and reality shows like The Voice and ABC’s American Idol could be hit especially hard since they usually finish up their seasons with live shows. ABC has already shut down production on the network’s biggest reality show, The Bachelorette, with no announced plans on whether Clare Crawley’s season will happen at this point.

Other programs that have halted production or been altogether canceled for 2020 include Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., Chicago Med, Grey’s Anatomy, The Flash, The Last Man Standing, and almost all late-night shows including The Late Late Show With James Corden, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Many of the late-night shows are now being picked back up, but the hosts will all be streaming the show from their homes and guests will only appear via live stream.


When Would ‘The Voice’ 2020 Live Shows and Voting Start?

Because of the number of episodes that are pre-taped in a season of The Voice, the live shows for the show were not due to start until sometime in May. The show still has to get through the previously recorded Battle Rounds and Knockout rounds before that live section would begin.

According to an interview with The Voice coach John Legend, which was conducted by the Associated Press, those pre-taped episodes give them a little wiggle room with what they’re doing for the remainder of this period of social distancing.

“There were only three weeks of live shows planned and those were for May,” he told the news outlet. “So who knows what we’ll do? I don’t know if we’ll be able to do them without an audience. I haven’t spoken to the producers about what the plans are.”

He continued, “And I think everybody’s playing things by ear because we don’t know where the world’s going to be in May.”

Legend mentioned that they may be able to do the live shows if they do not have a live audience but stressed that it’s not clear if that will be doable at that point, though he’d like to pull it off if they could. The Jonas Brothers have already canceled their Las Vegas Residency, which was set to take place between April 1 and 18.


‘The Voice’ 2020 Schedule

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The Battle Rounds of The Voice continue through Monday, April 6. After that, the Knockout rounds begin to air on Monday, April 13 and continue through the rest of the month.

When live episodes do begin to air, there will be fewer than a dozen contestants left for America to vote for. There would have only been three weeks worth of live episodes airing, and they would air on both Monday and Tuesday nights live coast-to-coast at 8 p.m. ET.

Tune in to The Voice on Monday (and eventually Tuesday) nights on NBC at 8 p.m. ET.

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