So I’m kinda into The Voice. A week in a hotel + Hulu = completely caught up and officially rooting for Beverly.

I was hooked by the blindfolded recruitment phase. In some ways it reminds me of the process of entering the realm of academia: reviewing writing and intellectual ephemera, top-of-the-field professors recruit graduate students to join their teams (these teams will eventually duke it out in academic journals and conferences around geeky topics). And just like the two ladies on Team Blake, sometimes grad students have to sing backup for their advisors.

In any case, I appreciate the strong representation of LGBT contestants not being tokenized as merely gay. For a superficial talent show, the Voice is doing a great job of presenting its contestants as humanly multifaceted. We’ll see what happens when contestants are voted only by a mainstream public next week.

And though it’s not necessarily tied solely to The Voice, this show is the apotheosis of participatory media’s integration into mainstream broadcasting. The show’s logo is shown as a hashtag throughout the show, the hosts mention when artists are “trending” on Twitter, which performers topped the iTunes charts, and coaches & contestants alike answer questions submitted via social network sites. The integration is not secondary to the show and is a sign of where television is moving.