A new contestant save feature was introduced on The Voice last week that enables Twitter users to “instantly save” one of the bottom three contestants. After a few minutes of hashtag mania over on the Twitter, one contestant is pulled from the elimination wreckage and allowed to continue on in the competition, while the other two are eliminated.
Last night saw the elimination of Kat Robichaud of Ceelo Green‘s team and Austin Jenckes of Blake Shelton‘s team. They, along with Caroline Pennell, were in the bottom three and viewers hashtagged Caroline to safety using the Twitter instant save.
While it was all well and good for Caroline, it caused The Ashley to wonder how fair the Twitter Save actually is. Because the show airs live to the East Coast, by the time it airs on the West Coast, the Twitter Save time is long over and the eliminated contestants are already being handed their bus tickets home. This begs the question: do contestants from the East Coast have an unfair advantage?
Caroline, who hails from New Jersey, received the most Twitter votes, which is no surprise because her hometown fans were able to jump on the Twitter machine and save her. The same cannot be said for poor Austin, who is from Washington (the state, not the D.C.) Unfortunately, his hometown supporters did not have the opportunity to vote for him because the show hadn’t aired yet.
Although it is true that fans on the West Coast are not banned from voting during the save, it is certainly not easy to figure the exact few moments to tweet when you are not able to watch the broadcast live.
Last week, Kat was saved using the Twitter save. She, like Caroline, hails from the East Coast.
After last night’s elimination, one angry viewer pointed this out on the show’s official Facebook page:
“The instant save is pretty unfair to the West Coast contestants,” Debbie Wise Denton wrote. “People like to support their home town provider…Sure we can log on ahead of time and see who gets voted out but that’s like reading the end of the book first. I can’t help but wonder if Austin would have been saved had he lived in a different time zone.”
The Ashley totally agrees! What do you think?
(Photo: NBC)
10 Responses
I agree. The West Coast needs to have a vote to make this fair.
The west coast got cheated in voting for the instant save. The voice could have a short window to vote for east coast and west coast then on the Monday performance announce the winner as a surprise. That would be fair.
I picked six contestants from the blind auditions. I called the team #CarlzView. When the battle rounds ended, I had one team member on each of the show teams. I currently have two left. Jake and Christina. I believe their still in the running due to their talent and not because of where they are from. GO TEAM #CarlzView. Just google my hashtag and all of my postings will come up. Follow me @carlnelsen.
The only way to really get nbc to change anything is by all west coast viewers to boycott the show, the drop in ratings would hopefully send them a message but its unlikely to happen. Too many people will watch even with the obvious unfairness
The Twitter save is ridiculous…negates all of the voting that occurred prior to the five minute window and cheats the West Coast and Hawaii…a total joke. Typical East Coast bias from NBC…they screwed up Wimbledon for years because of this bias…as so glad they lost broadcast rights to that. They need to get rid of it next year.
I hate this instant save. We are told to vote to keep our favorites. I don’t even have a Twitter account and won’t. Last night, 12/2/13, we were told to vote to keep our top 5 faves and I did. But now “tweeters” get to save the 5th one. What if the one they don’t save was actually in the top 5 by America’s votes? How do they feel about that? I would certainly be upset if I thought America voted to keep me only to let “tweeters” send me home. Does that seem fair? I get upset about this instant save every week! I really wish The Voice would explain if anyone has been sent home that was actually in the top (by America’s vote)!!!!!
It is so unfair for us and the fact that NBC and the voice know this, they have yet to take the instant save off. Telling us to go to a site to instant save by finding out who is left is NOT A SOLUTION. We like to view the eliminations, not being spoiled
Completely unfair. The votes that count are basically being tossed out, in favor of those who are in the east coast time zone and available at those 5 minutes to vote. Clearly it does not favor America’s vote.
I think it’s totally unfair (esp with Kat getting saved last week over Jonny, seriously?), but with that being said, the correct person was saved this week. Kat should have never made it to the top 10, she seemed exceptionally fake and over the top in my opinion. Austin was a fine singer but honestly, listening to him week after week talk about his father who committed suicide really just turned me off to him. I watch tv to relax not to listen to everyone’s sob stories. Every season they have contestants like this and every season it drives me insane. Will didnt mention his wife’s brain tumor until, I believe, the start of the live shows. And he only mentioned it that once and has never been talked about again. I applaud him for not going for the sympathy vote by berating us with this story every week.
I do think it is unfair because some people tend to vote for people coming frome their hometown/state. But I still love the voice, I loled so hard when they made the remake in my country with the signer of Bobby Pin.