Move over “American Idol.” You’re about to get some pretty serious competition.
NBC is joining forces with producers Mark Burnett and John de Mol to launch a new singing competition entitled “The Voice of America.” The idea for the new show comes from the popular program “The Voice of Holland,” which is currently the top-rated program in the Netherlands, and in Dutch TV history.
NBC is being very aggressive in getting “The Voice…” on the air. The show is being prepped for a spring premiere, so as to get a jump on Simon Cowell’s new competition “X Factor” (premiering next fall) and possibly to even go head to head against the slumping “American Idol” in the same time slot.
“It’s a bold move, it shows our confidence,” said NBC’s alternative chief Paul Telegdy of the production schedule. “But we’ve been busy fermenting a move into this genre for quite a few months. We’ve been at a state of DefCon 2.”
