Carson Daly (‘The Voice’ host and producer) on longevity, Emmys and succeeding ‘in a post-Blake Shelton world’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I just look back at the last 13 plus years, and it’s pretty amazing,” says four-time Emmy winner Carson Daly, who serves as host and producer of NBC’s “The Voice.” “I mean, the way that the world has changed, the way that television has evolved and content has changed and it’s been spread out, there’s so many more options. It almost makes your batting average even harder to have a show that has such longevity. The fact that we have stayed on for so long and held a high level of quality, those are the things that come to mind as I think back on 25 seasons.”
Daly says he’s grateful for the tremendous support the Emmys have shown “The Voice” throughout the years. In addition to four wins for Best Reality Competition Program, the show has amassed a total of 76 nominations. “They mean a tremendous amount,” he explains. “To anybody watching that just doesn’t have an inside track on winning an Emmy or being nominated for an Emmy, and people who might think it’s all superfluous or just sort of an ego, it’s really not. It is incredibly important for the men and women that you never see on television. That is who makes the show. So when you see my face or you see our coaches who are A-level musicians, they’re familiar faces and we get a lot of the credit and we’re in articles and we’re talked about, but we have such a small amount to do with the totality of the quality of the television show that people are viewing.”
The host reveals longtime coach Blake Shelton‘s departure was “the biggest hurdle that this show has ever had to endure. To try and succeed in a post-Blake Shelton world — he was the least known star when we started, yet ironically got the biggest bounce from the show and left the biggest star of anybody on the panel. Arguably, he will go down as one of the biggest stars in the history of NBC as a network, as a TV star. I mean, ‘The Voice’ is really part sitcom hidden as a singing competition. And a lot of that’s because the personality of Blake and Adam [Levine]. He’s been sort of at the epicenter of our paneling. So in a post-Blake world, that’s where Reba McEntire comes in.”
“Immediately we saw, not just in the ratings, but in sort of just the way we felt watching the show with Reba post-Blake, we were like, ‘Wow, what a perfect chess play for us just on the heels of not having Blake on the show.’ Nobody can fill his shoes, obviously, but it was just such a perfect get for us. And now she feels like a staple already.”
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