Where is South Africa's version of The Voice?
As country after country around the world adapt the format show with local versions of the hit show, South African broadcasters are left in the lurch as even poor countries like Angola and Mozambique have joined the buzz and zeitgeist by producing The Voice versions of their own.
In South Africa SABC3 showed the American version of The Voice until M-Net took over the rights and started showing newer seasons of The Voice on M-Net (DStv 101) and M-Net Series Showcase (DStv 113).
But there's been no local season yet of The Voice, like The Voice SA, while the show has raced past lamer, clearly tired formats like Idols and Got Talent.
Now Angola's Banda TV picked up Talpa Media's format for a Portuguese version of the show which is watched by 500 million viewers globally.
A local version of The Voice would surely reinvigorate M-Net's programming line-up in South Africa which has had Idols as its sole locally produced singing reality format competition, done in conjunction with Mzansi Magic (DStv 161).
A local South African version of The Voice could even be done for M-Net Series Reality (DStv 114) to put that DStv channel on the map and give it a tentpole, signature show of its own - or Mzansi Magic Music (DStv 321).
SABC3 won't do The Voice - the channel couldn't even keep up with just the buying of the rights to the American version.
e.tv won't take a duelling format while it is still doing SA's Got Talent which will roll around for another season in 2014.
On Digital Media's (ODM) constantly restructuring local content team which failed to do any mid to large budget local content programming roll-outs in the past three years is definitely not capable of doing The Voice for Star One (StarSat 110).
It leaves M-Net as currently the sole hope for a local version of The Voice.
