[Jon]

Heck, maybe they can get Tom Jones (a coach on the ITV version of The Voice) to do double duty and do the same role on the Welsh version. He's Welsh after all.

Except he apparently doesn’t speak a lot of Welsh. He’s from South Wales which is traditionally less Welsh speaking and I think it’s only a more recent thing it’s been taught in schools.

---

Well, didn’t see this one coming but…The Voice is coming to S4C.

Or to be more exact, Y Llais.

x.com 

I must admit I initially misread the logo and thought it was a Welsh version of Question Time.

[James2001]

Except he apparently doesn’t speak a lot of Welsh. He’s from South Wales which is traditionally less Welsh speaking and I think it’s only a more recent thing it’s been taught in schools.

He even mentioned on The Voice once that he doesn't speak Welsh.

[JAS84]

That proves XIII's point then, doesn't it? It won't be as easy to find coaches as it sounds on paper.

[Jon]

That proves XIII's point then, doesn't it? It won't be as easy to find coaches as it sounds on paper.

No. It just proves that particular person probably isn’t suitable.

[James2001]

That proves XIII's point then, doesn't it? It won't be as easy to find coaches as it sounds on paper.

There's more musicians in Wales than just Tom Jones!
Wynne Evans (the Go Compare man) already hosts shows on S4C (IIRC, he actually learned Welsh as part of an S4C show which had non-fluent Welsh celebrities learning the language- and then went on to present a later series! So clearly did well on it), so he's a possible choice.

A bit of research shows H from Steps took part in a different series of the same show as Wynne... though whether he became proficient enough to do something like this, I don't know, but he's another possible choice if he is.

Aled Jones is well known and a Welsh speaker too. And to be fair, who they pick to judge doesn't have to be that well known either, even if it's only a fifth of the Welsh population who can speak the language, there's still a reasonably sized pool to pick from.

[dafydd]

That proves XIII's point then, doesn't it? It won't be as easy to find coaches as it sounds on paper.

That just tells me you know nothing about Welsh music. There are hundreds of choices. S4C had a show called Wawffactor back before X-Factor even existed and that had judges from Catatonia, Pendulum and well-known artists in Wales.

It's nice to have a 'big name' like Bryn Terfel, but you could have someone like Cerys Matthews (I'd guess she is actually more well-known than Bryn to most people). However as a Welsh-language show, the coaches don't have to be world famous or even UK famous.

Since Bryn is the older 'Tom' figure, they will want a younger female coach. You could pick someone who had been on The Voice UK themselves like Bronwen Lewis or Tesni Jones. If you wanted a will.i.am rapper type you could go for Sage Todz. You could have folk/pop singers like Gwilym Bowen Rhys or Gareth Bonello. There are also plenty of Welsh artists that have millions of plays on Spotify and social media, like Adwaith, Alffa, Yws Gwynedd etc. Either Gwenno or sister Ani Glass would be great too. It will come down to who actually wanted to do it and getting a good balance of coaches.

[Jon]

Yes, there is obviously a whole Welsh laungauge music industry. Some of the English people in here seem oblivious to this and assume they’ve only got a choice of a select few people they’ve heard of. Which is odd considering S4C will have done countless music programmes over the years with hundreds of artists most of us are unaware of.

[Flux]

That proves XIII's point then, doesn't it? It won't be as easy to find coaches as it sounds on paper.

I know others have already responded to this, but some of the comments in this thread really are showing ignorance towards Wales, Wales’ culture and the Welsh language.

Just because Tom Jones doesn’t speak Welsh doesn’t mean they’re going to struggle to find Welsh speaking coaches

The issue is that you’re assuming coaches on a Welsh show need recognition in England or beyond. They don’t. There’s a whole internal scene in Wales itself which is filled with a whole pool of famous and respected musicians and performers.

Would you make the same assumption about the French or Spanish versions of the show? No, because you appreciate that although you might not have heard of them, the countries have their own internal scene filled with artists who soeak the language, therefore fame in England isn’t a crucial factor for coaches on the home grown versions. It might be a smaller country, but the same is true for Wales and S4C.

[lookoutwales]

New commissioning editor for entertainment (and factual entertainment) coming in next month.

www.s4c.cymru 

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Considering the mix of bought-in and original formats (one or two of which it could be said they overdepend on, a la Channel 4), let’s see if a change in direction is in the offing.

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