The Voice ditches live shows

'The Voice' has ditched its live episodes.

The singing competition is set to return to ITV in the coming months but host Emma Willis and coaches will.i.am, Sir Tom Jones, Olly Murs and Anne-Marie have already filmed every stage of the show, including the final.

A source confirmed: "Everything has been filmed. It was all done by mid-February."

The surprise move will have saved producers a lot of money because live TV is often expensive.

The insider added to the Daily Star Sunday newspaper: "Live shows are very expensive to do. Pre-recording episodes is a much cheaper way of making TV.

"Lots of big shows are all pre-recorded in full — 'The Masked Singer', 'Starstruck', 'Bake Off' and 'Drag Race' are some of them.

"The days of super-expensive 'X Factor'-style live shows every weekend throughout the autumn are long gone."

The decision to pre-record all episodes also means any coronavirus restrictions that are brought in won't derail the broadcast schedule for the show.

However, there are concerns that the result may leak online even though measures were taken to keep numbers limited when it came to announcing the winner during filming.

An ITV source said: "It’s a big worry that the result will be leaked on social media. If that happens it will cause a major headache.

"A lot of viewers won’t bother to tune in if they know who wins."

Last year, Anne-Marie mentored Craig Eddie to victory and he previously praised her for giving him good advice.

He said: "I think I got too fixated on getting through to the next stage and I got to the point where I probably wasn’t enjoying it as much as I could.

"So she [Anne-Marie] told me to just look around, to take everything in and to enjoy the experience."