After The Voice South Africa is bedeviled by voting interference again, M-Net says it will 'see how to make it a lot easier going forward'.

After voting issues again marred the second season of The Voice South Africa, M-Net says it will relook the entire voting system for future seasons and stressed that winner Craig Lucas wasn't one of the contestants who was involved in attempts to garner more votes through illegal paid-for marketing social media posts.

The second season of The Voice SA concluded on Sunday evening on M-Net (DStv 101) with 1.6 million votes cast.

The record number of votes for the show was however overshadowed by attempts at illegal vote rigging over the preceding three weeks that caused behind-the-scenes headaches for M-Net and AMPN producing the South African version of the Talpa format show, with a second season of the Nigerian show also currently in production for M-Net's Africa Magic channel.

AMPN and M-Net was forced to bring two voted out contestants back and to change the structure of the last two episodes after paid-for "boosted" social media posts appeared the past few weeks, canvassing for votes for the remaining contestants - something that's strictly against the rules.

Although M-Net didn't disqualify any contestants and also refused to name the guilty parties, the pay-TV broadcaster was adamant that the "boosted" Facebook posts didn't impact The Voice South Africa's voting process and didn't change the ranking of the top vote getters in the show.

M-Net said that the final contestant ranking order in terms of total votes cast during the last week didn't change from before Tuesday last week - when another paid-for attempt at vote influencing appeared - and after that when it was removed, and voting closed on Wednesday last week.

At the press conference following The Voice SA's live show finale, TVwithThinus asked M-Net about the voting issues and if M-Net is looking at changing anything.

"The issue around voting, the most important thing to say is that the issues that arose had no material impact on the voting results. Very important, going forward, it is something that we will engage with as a business, and try and see how to make it a lot easier going forward," said Nkateko Mabaso, general manager for M-Net South Africa.

Nkateko Mabaso also stressed that "Craig wasn't part of the people that were said to have been part of the boosting. I need to make that very clear."

He said that "for us this has been a fantastic season. We've also done well from a viewership perspective as a channel. There's been great engagement around the property."

TVwithThinus asked how The Voice SA benefited from a longer second season that saw the show expand to more episodes.

"In season one we went into the live shows with 32 people in 6 shows," said Darren Hayward, The Voice SA director.

"So it was very difficult for the viewer to form a bond or a relationship with the talent. So the big focus in going into season 2 was to try and get as few people going into the live shows as possible, and lose as few people - so that the viewer gets time to spend some time with them and get to understand them a little bit better."

"The aim was that you get to a moment like this where your favourite wins and it's not someone you're just getting to know."

"So making a longer season was firstly something that M-Net as a channel wanted, but also in that we could get people to get to know the talent a lot better".

"We know that Craig Lucas has a fantastic year ahead of him," said Yolisa Phahle, M-Net CEO. "And we are so proud of your mom. Thank you to the fans. Thank you to the families. Thank you to the production who did an incredible job. And thank you to everybody at M-Net."

M-Net said it will be releasing the voting statistics for the second season of The Voice SA in a week.

The Voice SA winner Craig Lucas says the M-Net show forced him out of his comfort zone: I was scared of getting on stage and feeling completely alone'.

The winner of the second season of The Voice South Africa, Craig Lucas, says he's lived a very sheltered life and that the singing competition reality show on M-Net helped to push him beyond his comfort zone and to be less scared of new things and change.

On Sunday evening on M-Net (DStv 101) Craig Lucas was announced as the winner at the end of the live 2-hour finale of The Voice SA, produced by AMPN, from the Mosaiek Theatre in Fairland, Johannesburg.

Craig Lucas wins a record deal from Universal Music South Africa and other sponsored prizes that include R250 000 in cash, a smartphone, watch, camera and flat screen TV set, R100 000 of clothes from a retailer and a car.

Asked about what music will be on his first album he said "I write song of many different kinds. Every week I feel like I've got a different sound going, but at the core of it is, whatever sound it's going to be, it's going to real and it's going to be emotional and come from a very genuine place."

Craig Lucas said "I didn't realise the power of my support until I won because there was always that doubt in my mind that I'm probably not going to make it to the next round."

"Before The Voice South Africa I've lived a very sheltered life - I don't try new things, I don't go to new places. I'm scared."

"The Voice SA just sort of forced me to get out of my comfort zone, with the songs I sing, or what I do on stage or even with what I wear."

"And a couple of months I would have never thought that I could have done this. I probably would be shaking just seeing all of these people in front of me. It just taught me to be unafraid. And even if I didn't win, I would have missed out on all of this, so that's the best thing I got out of the show."

His advice for future contestants of The Voice South Africa is "your friends and your family - that's your safe spot".

"You know that they'll always be honest with you. Just have them close and involve them in your music as well, so that you don't feel alone. That's the thing that scared me the most - getting on stage and feeling completely alone".

One of the biggest production gambles in The Voice SA live finale on M-Net had to do with winner Craig Lucas' mom Jenny - and she knew nothing about it.

Probably the biggest production gamble in The Voice South Africa's live finale that was broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) on Sunday evening and that saw Craig Lucas won, revolved around his mom Jenny - who knew nothing about a big surprise, and luckily "played along" perfectly.

Viewers of the second season finale of The Voice South Africa on Sunday on M-Net would have seen Craig Lucas (23) from Cape Town sing Chris de Burgh's "Lady in Red" while his mom, Jenny Lucas (52) suddenly got scooped up from her seat in the audience by a hunky dancer and then started slow dancing to her son's singing.

So well and gracefully she danced along that neither viewers nor the Mosaiek Theatre studio audience could actually tell whether she was in on the "act" and knew and was prepped for it beforehand - or whether it came as a total surprise for the mother from Elsies River.

Flanked by a trio of violinists on either side and a stage bathed in red spotlights during the latter half of the 2-hour show, Craig Lucas belted out the Chris de Burgh ballad while his mom sat and attentively watched her son from her seat.

She was flown in from Cape Town, and given a front row, corner seat at the right hand side of the stage by the AMPN production company for the live TV show finale.

While two dancers performed centre stage in front of the coaches' desk, the male dancer suddenly spun away the female dancer, dressed in red, and rushed - with a camera man in tow - over to Craig Lucas' mom.

On cue and timed perfectly in the few seconds just before building to the crescendo of the song's chorus for maximum impact, The Voice SA perfectly landed the emotional money shot as the dancer scooped mom Jenny out of her seat and started dancing with her.

And she danced along.

What could have been a live TV production disaster if Jenny Lucas didn't know and if the unprepared mom froze up, didn't know what to do, or didn't want to dance along, worked out beautifully.

TVwithThinus asked The Voice SA director Darren Hayward and winner Craig Lucas about what was probably the final episode's biggest mystery: Did mom Jenny knew what was going to happen?

"I knew - but I didn't tell her because I wanted it to be a surprise for her as well," says Craig Lucas.

"I actually missed it because if I was going to look at her I was going to start breaking. I was going to cry in the middle of my performance."

"So I wanted to see but I told myself, 'Don't look, don't look'. I will have to watch back the episode on M-Net to see it," he says.

"I think Craig's mom has turned out to be one of the great characters of the show actually. She played it beautifully," says Darren Hayward, director.

Craig Lucas from Elsies River in Cape Town the winner of the second season of The Voice South Africa on M-Net.

Craig Lucas (23) from Elsies River in Cape Town was announced as the winner of the second season of The Voice South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101) at the end of the 2-hour live broadcast from the Mosaiek Teatro in Fairland, Johannesburg.

The AMPN produced show with director Darren Hayward saw Parlotones frontman Kahn Morbee who remains one of the coaches on The Voice SA, clinch the title of winning coach for a second year in a row.

More than 1.6 million votes - a new voting record - were cast in the final week of voting for The Voice South Africa, although the voting system and voting process were once again marred as was the first season by voting issues that negatively impacted the TV reality singing competition.

Where the first season saw votes not counted in time, the last three weeks saw illegal online paid-for marketing "boosted social media posts" that forced M-Net, AMPN and auditors Deloitte and Touche to discard certain votes and to bring two ousted contestants back.

The illegal activity once again occured during the final week of voting, although M-Net says it didn't impact the ranking of the top remaining The Voice SA contestants. It also lead to 7 contestants in the live finale instead of the originally planned 4.

Craig Lucas who got the most votes beat out runner-up Josh Ansley (31), as well as Samantha Leonard (24), Caroline Grace Brussow (31), PJ Pretorius (26), Fatman (41) and Luke Lovemore (23).

While music has always been Craig Lucas' big passion, he first had to keep his promise to his mother to complete his university studies. Craig Lucas now holds an honours degree in finance from the University of Cape Town.

Craig Lucas wins a record deal from Universal Music South Africa and other sponsored prizes that include R250 000 in cash, a smartphone, watch, camera and flat screen TV set, R100 000 of clothes from a retailer and a car.

M-Net's The Voice SA experienced another illegal vote boosting attempt on Tuesday before Sunday's second season finale.

M-Net's reality singing competition The Voice South Africa experienced another illegal vote boosting attempt on Tuesday before Sunday's second season finale but the pay-TV broadcaster says the order of the seven contestants and the ranking of the winner remained the same after the illegal vote boost action from what it was before.

What it means is that the voting rules of The Voice SA were broken on Tuesday when a paid-for social media posting appeared canvassing for votes for a remaining contestant but that the person who will be announced as the eventual winner at the end of Sunday night's live finale, would have been the winner anyway even before the attempt of voter influencing took place.

M-Net says Sunday's winner that will be announced was the winner before and after the boosting.

M-Net says another "boosted social media post linked to The Voice SA" appeared on the morning of Tuesday 4 July. This paid-for marketing is against the rules of the show.

The incident is the latest embarrassing voting mishap for the show and M-Net, that have so far been unable to completely protect the voting ecosystem from undue external influence.  

This is the fourth voting mishap to damage the voting credibility of the South African version of the African Media & Production Network (AMPN) produced show that is based on the international Talpa format - two during the first season and now also two during the second season, with voting that was actually halted last week and that saw the tainted voting tally discarded.

M-Net says that any voting abnormalities "such as spikes are analysed to assess whether there is a material effect on the voting results" and that "appropriate actions are taken, if required".

"At M-Net's request, Deloitte and Touche independently computed the vote count and ranking just prior to this week's boosted post and confirmed that the ranking of the talent and overall winner had not changed since the boosted post ocurred," says the broadcaster in a statement.

Now with 7 instead of just 4 contestants in Sunday evening's live finale on M-Net (DStv 101), the show has been forced to adjust the structure. The broadcasting duration has been extended to two hours to allow for more space, and will now start at 17:00.

The Voice SA that is broadcast a day later on Mondays on the second-tiered channel M-Net City (DStv 115) will also have its finale simulcast as a live broadcast on Sunday for DStv Compact subscribers.

Ironically, in a case of unintentional like-for-like in-house counter-programming, the second season finale of The Voice SA is going up against the season debut of the 13th season of Idols on the M-Net sister channel Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) at 17:30 that might impact the finale ratings of The Voice SA.

Sunday's The Voice South Africa season ender will see the alternative rock band Gangs of Ballet perform, as well as artists like Nadine, Nianell, Gavin Edwards, Emo Adams, Thembeka Mnguni, Jimmy Nevis and Magdalene Minnaar who will be doing collaborations with the seven contestants.

After illegal 'boosted Facebook posts' the second season finale of The Voice South Africa on M-Net will see a structure change.

After illegal "boosted Facebook posts" that could have resulted in more votes for certain contestants, the second season live finale of The Voice South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101) will see a structure change for the now top-heavy last episode that is still set for 9 July.

M-Net's The Voice South Africa reality singing show recalled the last two ditched contestants for this Sunday's episode and also won't be voting any contestant out this coming Sunday after yet another voting fiasco has derailed the carefully planned structure of the pay-TV broadcaster's second season.

In the third voting misfire to hit and negatively impact the South African version of the African Media & Production Network (AMPN) produced show based on the international Talpa format - two during the fateful first season and now also marring the second season - M-Net decided to halt this week's voting.

Voting for The Voice South Africa will only resume on Sunday night.

Hours before Tuesday night's 22:00 cut off, M-Net abruptly scuppered the viewer voting for this week and decided to disregard hundreds of thousands of viewers votes due to irregularities regarding alleged paid-for marketing votes that could potentially have skewed the results.

The Voice South Africa invited the ousted contestants Luke Lovemore and PJ Pretorius back, but on Thursday still didn't know if one, or both, would accept to return to perform in Sunday show and the finale.

It means that Sunday's show could have 6 or 7 contestants, with 6 or 7 contestants in the finale on 9 July as well, instead of the originally envisioned 4.

"M-Net has given Luke Lovemore and PJ Pretorius, the two talent in The Voice SA who left the show during the voting periods in which the boosted Facebook posts occured, the option to return to the show," the pay-TV broadcaster told TVwithThinus on Wednesday.

"We are not in the position yet to confirm whether they will be coming back, or not."

"The final of the series will still take place on Sunday, 9 July," said M-Net, confirming that M-Net is "relooking the running orders for the semi-final and final, not only because of the possible return of the two previously voted-off talent, but also because nobody from the last voting period will be going home."

Asked how M-Net and AMPN will ensure or be able to ascertain what votes are credible and countable going forward and which votes not, M-Net said "there is no question whether the votes cast during all the voting periods were valid".

"The vote results were independently computed by Deliotte and Touche and confirmed against the vote results determined by M-Net".

"The question was whether there was misconduct around the boosting of posts, which talent is not allowed to do," said M-Net.

"Despite our best efforts, we could not determine whether the boosted posts, gave anyone an unfair advantage or disadvantage. Therefore, we believe the fairest option under these unusual circumstances was to not send someone from the Top 5 home and extend an invitation to the two talent who left the shows during the affected voting periods to return to the show."

M-Net stressed that voting for the DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards 2017 set for a live broadcast on 26 August on Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) - a new awards show competition also making use of WeChat and SMS voting similar to The Voice South Africa - isn't affected by the voting issues that has marred the reality singing competition.

"There were no issues around the voting platforms on The Voice South Africa," M-Net told TVwithThinus.

"It is paid-for marketing by contestants in The Voice SA that's against the rules. The DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards are distinct from other talent programmes like Idols and The Voice SA as the nominees are public figures with well-established personal brand promotion practices".

M-Net recalls ousted The Voice South Africa contestants as a voting fiasco once again engulfs the reality singing show.

M-Net's The Voice South Africa reality singing show is recalling the last two ditched contestants back for Sunday's episode and also won't be voting any contestant out this coming Sunday after yet another voting fiasco has derailed the carefully planned structure of the pay-TV broadcaster's second season.

In the third voting misfire to hit and negatively impact the South African version of the African Media & Production Network (AMPN) produced show based on the international Talpa format - two during the fateful first season and now also marring the second season - M-Net has been forced to halt this week's voting.

Hours before Tuesday night's 22:00 cut off, M-Net abruptly scuppered the viewer voting for this week and decided to disregard hundreds of thousands of viewers votes due to irregularities regarding alleged paid-for marketing votes that could potentially skew the results.

Not only did M-Net discover that the paid for social media posting from some of the contestants' personal social media accounts could affect who gets jettisoned this week, but that it also stretches back and impacts the past two weeks' results.

Voting for The Voice South Africa can only be done through SMS - limited to 100 votes per user - and WeChat - also limited to 100 votes per user.

At the moment M-Net (DStv 101) and AMPN - that is also concurrently producing a second season of The Voice Nigeria done in South Africa's Sasani Studios - isn't planning to push out the live second season finale of the South Africa show set for 9 July that would be more fair for the remaining contestants, rather opting for a jumble-filled finale with a bumper line-up of contestants.

M-Net is inviting the booted contestants Luke Lovemore and PJ Pretorius back who must still indicate in writing if they want to return to The Voice SA for Sunday's live show in which nobody will leave.  

The remaining five The Voice South Africa contestants will perform, along with Luke Lovemore and PJ Pretorius if one or both opt to return.

After carefully working to steer clear of the voting problems of the first season of The Voice SA that first saw 8 000 SMS votes not delivered in time and counted and then the voting platform collapse during the live finale, M-Net and AMPN that added more episodes to the second season, is once again being confronted with a show not going according to plan.

At 19:01 on Tuesday evening M-Net issued a statement saying The Voice South Africa that has been drawing packed crowds to the weekly Sunday shows is discarding the hundreds of thousands of votes of the past week and asking the last two voted out contestants back "in the interest of fairness and transparency".

M-Net says paid-for marketing, which is against the rules of The Voice SA competition, "can cause voting spikes which could provide an unfair advantage".

M-Net didn't say how it will bypass, filter out, or circumvent the undue voting influence in The Voice SA for the foreseeable future. M-Net also didn't disclose which of the contestants' social media accounts contain alleged paid-for activity.

M-Net said an investigation showed that paid-for social media marketing "could have affected the outcome of the voting results" the last few weeks of The Voice South Africa and that Luke Lovemore and PJ Pretorius who were voted out, could possibly have remained in the show.

M-Net says it's unable to know with certainty what The Voice South Africa's accurate and credible voting tallies for the past few weeks are supposed to be.

"Despite our best efforts, we could not determine with certainty whether misconduct took place and what the impact was on the voting results," says Nkateko Mabaso, M-Net South Africa's general manager in the statement.

"We believe the fairest solution under these circumstances is to give all the affected talent another chance".

Despite discarding thousands of viewers' votes, M-Net wants viewers to continue to vote.

"The Voice SA has proved to be an excellent platform for launching the careers of new singing talent and we would like to encourage our viewers to continue to vote for their favourites," he says.

Lani Lombard, M-Net's head of publicity says The Voice SA is so far sticking to its Sunday 9 July date for the second season's live finale.

It’s not yet clear if the voting issue could impact M-Net and MultiChoice’s just-launched DStv Mzansi Viewers’ Choice Awards set for 26 August. The live awards show also asking the public to vote, is also making use of WeChat, SMS and USSD for votes.

M-Net on The Voice South Africa live finale voting scandal: 'We're not exactly sure what went wrong tonight'; blames platform collapse on show's massive success.

M-Net went down for the count on Sunday night when a total voting collapse of its online system marred the live finale of The Voice South Africa in which Richard Stirton was announced the winner and plunged the pay-TV broadcaster and the show into yet another voting scandal with none of the votes made by actual viewers on Sunday that were counted to determine a winner.

M-Net says it doesn't know what went wrong and why the voting system collapsed and that M-Net doesn't know who voted for who on Sunday night: the voting failure due to an avalance of votes is because The Voice South Africa is a victim of its own success.

The result is that viewers didn't chose the winner of The Voice SA on Sunday during the live finale of the reality singing competition as M-Net promised would happen, with only the votes made until the end of Thursday used to determine Richard Stirton as the winner.

Viewers whose data and votes were wasted on Sunday are furious over the The Voice SA voting failure that's highly embarrassing for M-Net and African Media & Production Network (AMPN) that produced the show in conjunction with the international format right holder Talpa international.

The Voice SA's voting collapse comes just two weeks after the show also suffered a voting glitch it blamed on Vodacom, when 8 000 SMS votes were delivered late and forced the show to have 13 instead of 12 contestants after M-Net and auditors Deloitte & Touche said that the "lost" votes could have changed the outcome regarding which contestant got sent home.

Sunday's The Voice SA voting system implosion is the second big voting scandal that's engulfed M-Net. In 2009 M-Net was mired in a viewers' voting scandal when Sasha-Lee Davids was announced as the winner of the 5th season of Idols although Jason Hartman was the real winner with 200 000 more votes that were not counted in time.

Technical voting problems also impacted Idols and the contestants in 2002, and again in the 10th season in 2014.

On Sunday night presenter Lungile Radu suddenly told viewers briefly that no votes made on Sunday will count anymore because of "intermittent" voting platform issues - something that wasn't explained and viewers didn't understand.

Yolisa Phahle, M-Net CEO who attended the live finale, left her seat during the show and didn't return - presumably called to be informed of the unfolding voting crisis.

After the conclusion of Sunday's live finale, no M-Net production executives, M-Net channel head or executive producer were part of the tabled panel for the press conference of The Voice SA as is usual and expected, and has been the case for all M-Net channels' reality competition shows the past few years like Idols, Power Couple SA, MasterChef SA and Survivor SA.

Yolisa Phahle who did appear but stood on the sidelines of the press conference and didn't take any official questions from the press corps on Sunday night.

"Basically The Voice South Africa broke the internet on Sunday night," said Lani Lombard, M-Net's head of publicity, who said M-Net isn't sure of exactly what went wrong and why.

"There was a massive number of votes coming through on our voting platforms and as a result of that - as you know we are a responsible broadcaster - we are always very transparent what is going on in our voting platforms - and we work with our auditors as well, to make sure that the results are fair."

"Because of this we decided to go back to what the results were at the close of voting lines on Thursday night. And that is as per the terms and conditions. So if you go into the terms and conditions, it clearly says that if there are any technical issues, that we will go back to the previous votes."

"Just to make sure that you are absolutely clear about this: Tonight's votes would have been added to this week's votes."

TVwithThinus asked what exactly went wrong and what M-Net and the production did after the voting failure a few weeks ago to pro-actively prevent and if the pay-TV broadcaster shouldn't have enlarged capacity if contestants' songs started breaking online records on iTunes.

"All the issues we've had up until now were on the SMS platform. So that was the reason why we didn't do that as well [SMS voting] on Sunday because we know that the volumes can create a problem. We did test our capacity and quite a lot as well."

"We tested the voting volumes up until 36 000 votes per seconds. We're not exactly sure what went wrong tonight. It was some kind of a technical error somewhere. But we did have tests to make sure that it wouldn't happen. But despite that, it still did."

TVwithThinus asked when on Sunday M-Net and AMPN noticed that there were voting irregularities.

"It happened very soon; literally seconds, minutes after the voting lines opened. Some people did have access to the voting platforms, and others didn't have access," said Lani Lombard.

"People started posting comments on social media, so immediately we started investigating that. There are also backups, so we reverted to the backups to see if we could get it going again but it was too intermittent."

"So because we are a responsible broadcaster and because we're always transparent, we went with the fair option not to make the votes count".

"This is the fairest decision because you don't know how many people voted for who. So it makes it very difficult to make a decision based on guessing work. The best possible thing was to revert back to the roll-over votes made until Thursday."

"It would be impossible to say how many votes went to the other contestants as well. I do think that we saw this week as well that Richard was number one on iTunes, he was extremely popular throughout the competition, and we could just have guessed how the voting would have gone tonight but it probably would have been very similar."

"We would have wanted all of the voting platforms to have worked 100%, so that is unfortunately how it happened," said Lani Lombard.

M-Net said it will release the voting data of votes cast until Thursday later.

M-Net's The Voice SA goes video viral as international viewers outside of South Africa are clamouring to watch and download episodes illegally.

M-Net's The Voice South Africa has gone video viral, with international viewers outside of South Africa's borders clamouring to download episodes illegally - an indication of the "must watch" buzz the local version of the singing reality competition has attracted.

Similar to the way in which the illegal downloads and sharing of the hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones is a good bad problem for HBO to have since it's indicative of highly prized premium content viewers simply feel they have to see, M-Net (DStv 101) now has the same problem with The Voice SA.

People without access to the M-Net channel want to see entire episodes in full and are now going to cyberspace to get and see what they don't have access to.

M-Net executives who originally said The Voice SA will only be for the M-Net channel as its new premium local content production for the year, quickly relented and also scheduled the show for lower-tiered DStv subscribers with episodes now also running on the M-Net City (DStv 115) channel.

International viewers and those without DStv are however as fascinated by the South African version of the red swivel chair show and have taken to the internet to find and download pirated episodes of The Voice SA.

Within hours of the Sunday night broadcast of the first episode of The Voice South Africa three weeks ago the episode was uploaded to numerous online (and illegal) sites. The phenomenon has continued with each of the already aired three episodes becoming available on Monday mornings and shared online very soon after it's broadcast locally.

The last time an international audience became desperate to watch a local South African show was with the first season of Pawn Stars SA on A+E Networks UK's History (DStv 186) in late 2014.

Before that it was also an M-Net show in early 2014 that created must watch cyber buzz when Survivor South Africa: Champions became the first South African show that turned into an online watching and sharing TV sensation as a global audience downloaded and watched pirated episodes.

Asked what M-Net makes of the illegal uploading and downloading of The Voice SA episodes - a show produced by AMPN in conjunction with the international format right holder Talpa international - the pay-TV broadcaster tells TVwithThinus that it's great that the show is loved but that it is damaging to the local TV industry.

"Even though this behaviour illustrates that our audiences love reality shows such as The Voice and want to share it with friends and family, piracy is illegal and potentially damaging to the local television industry," says Lani Lombard, M-Net's head of publicity.

"If The Voice South Africa fans in other countries would like to follow the show, they can find clips of all the performances and highlights of the show on our official online platforms. The website address is mnet.tv/thevoice ".

TOLDJA! The Voice South Africa coming to M-Net: Local version will start in early 2016; already called M-Net's new 'Game of Thrones'.

TV critics and advertisers are already calling it "M-Net's new Game of Thrones": The local version of the singing reality show The Voice South Africa that will start on M-Net (DStv 101) early in 2016 and which the pay-TV broadcaster announced yesterday.

TV with Thinus was first to spill that The Voice SA is on its way after the pay-TV broadcaster finally crossed the t's and dotted the i's to make a first local season of the show. South Africa is now the 60th country in the world to make a local version of The Voice.

It doesn't mean the end of Idols though, currently in its 11th season on M-Net and Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) - the pay-TV broadcaster announced that Idols has been renewed for a 12th season for 2016 which will again be a co-production between both those channels in the M-Net stable.

The announcement of The Voice SA was made at M-Net and DStv Media Sales' content showcase for advertisers held in Johannesburg onWednesday afternoon.

"As we approach our 30th anniversary, I'm thrilled to share with you of a major new series we will bring to M-Net in 2016, The Voice SA, exclusive to channel 101," Yolisa Phahle, M-Net South Africa CEO told the packed crowd of TV critics and ad buyers.

"It's the most successful talent reality show in the world and I think it's the perfect show to take M-Net into its next 30 years," said Yolisa Phahle. "Sunday nights are going to be a whole lot more magical from next year."

Behind her a black curtain parted to the sides to reveal one of the iconic red swivel chairs used in the show with Kahn Morbee of The Parlotones who sat in the chair, got up and belted out a song for the audience in a magical moment.

"With its impeccable international track record and blend of undiscovered talent, star power and spectacular sets, it's the perfect fit for a channel that puts a high premium on great family entertainment," said Yolisa Phahle.

"A show of this magnitude is also a fantastic platform for some of our biggest local recording artists. Apart from the panel of four coaches, several guest coaches will also make guest appearances to hone our talent."

The names of the four South African coaches who will dedicate themselves to developing the singers in their team mentally, musically and technically, will be announced later this year.

After the announcement, advertising executives were quick to storm the stage to take selfies sitting in the seat, as well as a pic from a professional photographer in another red swivel chair in M-Net and DStv Media Sales' circus tent outside.

Ad executives and the media were quick to call The Voice SA "M-Net's new Game of Thrones" - alluding to the popular American fantasy drama from HBO which M-Net has the rights to and is showing on M-Net Edge (DStv 102).

"The Voice South Africa will be looking for a class act singer with a unique sound - the kind that will make you stop to listen closely or create awe-inspiring moments," says Harrie Linders, the managing director of AMPN, the production company which will be creating the show for M-Net in conjunction with international format right holders TALPA International.

"Instead of judging someone on his of her looks personally, it's all about the voice and it doesn't matter what your musical background is. The Voice encompasses a wide variety of music genres," says Harrie Linders.

Entries for The Voice SA is open for any South African older than 18, and there's no upper age cut-off. Open auditions will be held in South Africa's biggest cities. Singers will also be able to submit a song online for a possible "fast track" to the front of the audition queues.

M-Net will announce the prize package, the audition dates and venues in early September and on www.mnet.tv/thevoice