Is the second season talent better than the first?

The first season of any competition show is more like a trial run.  If it does well they will continue the show the following year, if not it gets dropped.  Last year NBC's The Voice premiered and gave viewers a new style of singing competition.  There are basically four stages to the show: 1) Submit an audition to the show, 2) The blind audition, 3) The battle rounds, 4) The public votes. The audience only sees the last three stages.

All competition shows need to have judges right?  Well The Voice has tweaked that idea too.  The show has employed 4 big time artists, Blake Shelton, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo, and Adam Levine, to be coaches instead of judges.  The show not only has the competitors competing but the coaches are competing also.  If a judge likes the voice they hear they turn their chair around to signify that they want them on their team.  If more than one coach turns around it then becomes the choice of the person auditioning to choose whose team they want to be on.  Having coaches instead of judges means that the competitors will be getting advise and coaching not just for the song they will be performing but that will last them forever.
To my knowledge, this is the first competition show where the contestants have to be invited to audition in the "blind audition" stage.  I like this because it means we, the viewers, don't have to sit cringing at the contestant that clearly can't sing.  The blind audition is also unique in that the contestants are chosen solely based on their voice.  This eliminates the bias related to how the person looks.  They accomplish the "blindness" by having the "judges" sit with their backs to the contestant and then if they like them then they hit their button and their chair will turn around and "I Want You" will light up on the bottom of their chair.

Due to its popularity season 2 has brought with it an increase in team size to 12 people going into the battle rounds.  In the battle rounds the coaches pair their team up so they have six groups each.  The coach then chooses a song for each group that they will perform together and then the coach must make the difficult choice of choosing which team member performed better and the other will go home.  This leaves 6 people on each team going into the public voting stage.  Once in the public voting stage it works much like any other competition show where the viewers decide the winner.  However, the twist is that the coach of the winner is also considered a winner because they "discovered the best."  The season 1 winner was Javier Colon and his coach, Adam Levine.

This show is also unique in that it incorporates new media into it.  During the show the coaches are tweeting about what had just happened and it shows up on the bottom of the screen so even if you don't follow them you can see what they are saying.  The buzz from the coaches is that the talent level of season 2 is so much higher that the coaches are choosing the competitors with unique voices.  They want something new and different for their teams.  I guess we'll see if they succeed.

Stay tuned for more season 2 news.