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Cape Town – 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 last episode that is still set for 9 July.
M-Net's The Voice South Africa reality singing show recalled the last two eliminated contestants from two previous episodes and won't be voting out any contestants this coming Sunday after a voting glitch. (Read more here).
Voting for The Voice South Africa will only resume on Sunday night after the live show.
Hours before Tuesday night's 22:00 cut off, M-Net abruptly scrapped the viewer voting for this week 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.
Structure change for 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 Channel24 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."
