It was inevitable. The juggernaut that has been The Voice Australia was going to try to connect with it’s audience better as it moved into the live shows and having a known identity be the face of that connection/integration makes a lot of sense. Enter Fuzzy and her role as ‘V-Reporter’ (worst title ever). How well it’s integrated is out of her hands – it could be well kludgy or smooth – and we’ll find out from this Monday. From the press release:

Channel Nine today announced the newest member of The Voice cast – Faustina Agolley, The V-Reporter for the Live Shows commencing Monday, May 14, at 7.30pm.

The V-Reporter is the face of The V-Room, The Voice’s social media hub. Faustina – former Australian host of Video Hits, will bridge the gap between on-air and online. She will make regular appearances during the live broadcasts, monitoring social media feeds and reporting key tweets and statistics to the audience.

The Voice will continue to push the boundaries between broadcast and online by bringing social media conversations to the on-air show. Agolley will address real-time feedback from viewers, engaging fans and connecting them to artists and coaches from The V-Room via Facebook, Twitter and www.thevoice.com.au.

“We are excited to welcome Faustina to the team. Her fantastic pedigree in music television and her social media knowledge and following makes her the perfect person to take on the V Reporter role for The Voice,” Adrian Swift, Nine’s Director of Development, said.

The Voice is the Nine Network’s ratings, social media and online phenomenon of 2012. The super talent quest has already been engaging viewers via Twitter, and in the upcoming live shows as with the Blind Auditions and Battle Rounds, fans who use #TheVoiceAu or tweet to the show may see their tweets appear on-screen.

For the Blind Auditions and Battle Rounds, The Voice joined with Mass Relevance, a social integration technology partner, to provide real-time tweets to the screen within seconds. Mass Relevance is an official partner of Twitter, giving them full Twitter firehose access. This means they have the ability to aggregate and filter through all 340 million tweets per day.

Active viewer engagement is a key component of The Voice, and the addition ofFaustina as the V-Room host will allow viewers to interact with the show, the artists and the coaches.

“The integration of live tweets into The Voice has brought an editorial layer that adds to the experience of the viewer and their level of engagement in the show. It has been an exciting evolution in television production that has really taken theshow to another level,” Julie Ward, Director of Entertainment for SHINE Australia, said.

The Voice is a co-production between SHINE Australia and Talpa Productions and is broadcast on the Nine Network. The Australian series of The Voice is filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney.

Visit us at www.thevoice.com.au, follow us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TheVoiceAu, and on Twitter at @TheVoiceAu and #TheVoiceAu.