This weekend saw the last of the blind auditions on the BBC’s talent show “The Voice”. The novelty of the spinning chairs has always been an immensely popular element of the format; creating the drama that audiences crave from their Saturday night TV. Sadly for the BBC, this is where it all seems to go wrong for their answer to Simon Cowell’s “X Factor”.

Let’s rewind ten years, back to when the “X Factor” first graced our screens. The premise for Cowell’s brain child was to find artists that would otherwise go undiscovered; to find someone who had the X Factor- a conveniently indefinable quality that sets an artist apart from the mediocre others. Of course, Cowell being Cowell, the ultimate goal of the first and subsequent series’ was to find artists he could market to be extremely popular and who would consequently make him obscene amounts of money.

The unfortunate truth for hopefuls who audition for the X Factor is that if you have a face for radio, you are not going to get very far and just to prove this, the show has spawned hoards of successful artists. Notable X Factor success stories include Leona Lewis, JLS and of course, every school girl’s dream: One Direction. In a shallow world, the sad truth is that the audience that these kind of shows are marketed to don’t want ugly bedroom wall material.

That brings us to The Voice; a show created as a fairer alternative to the X Factor. Instead of the celebrities “judging” contestants as with the X Factor, they are dubbed as “coaches” on the understanding that they will nurture the natural talent that contestants possess. In the UK version, the resident coaches are Will.i.am, Tom Jones, Rita Ora and Ricky Wilson.

The blind auditions see the coaches choosing recruits for their teams solely on the merits of contestants’ voices and as such, the cast for each series becomes an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life, all ages and of varying degrees of attractiveness. This is seen as a much fairer and human alternative to the way X Factor has done things for years; giving hope to thousands of people across the country who have talent, but not necessarily the looks to back it up.

This is great for those people. Hope is a powerful thing and if a TV show can create hope for people in a society dominated by the shallow idea that looks are everything, then that’s also a hugely positive and powerful thing. The evidence is however stacked against The Voice and the idea that this is the way forward for such reality shows.

Compared to the X Factor, the Voice has yet to produce a successful recording artist. When considered that the current series is the fourth, that isn’t such an impressive track record. Surely the point of such shows is to create successful artists that will create obscene amounts of money (point in case, Mr Simon Cowell), otherwise they just become a platform for parading hopeless wannabes like Quasimodo for all to see and mock.
This seems to be the sad truth for such shows. A happy side effect for Cowell on the X Factor is that he has made money from a handful of the hundreds of contestants who have gone on to be a success but the real money-maker is the sadistic parade every week where hopeful’s dreams are either made or broken.

The Voice is very similar in that it parades people under the guise of focussing on what really matters when actually there is little difference between it and the X Factor. Simon Cowell is just a little more honest about his intentions.