By Ken Barnes
Special to MSN TV

After nearly toppling "American Idol" in the early stages of the ratings battle earlier this year, before fading, "The Voice" has made a speedy turnaround to battle FOX's other music competition, "The X Factor," this fall. (Although it may turn out to be a cannibalistic disaster, "The Voice" is going head-to-head against "X Factor" at least once, during the shows' premiere week. "Voice" episodes start Monday, Sept. 10, at 8 p.m. ET/PT and also go on to Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT. "X Factor" bows that very same hour Wednesday on FOX, and continues Thursday, Sept. 13 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.)

Bing: More about 'The Voice' | 'The X Factor'

On paper, "The Voice" has a sizable advantage, having averaged greater than 3 million viewers more than "X Factor" last season -- about the same margin by which "Idol" beat "The Voice."

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But "X Factor" seized hold of the buzz factor early in 2012 by firing its two female judges, Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger (the latter has salvaged a judging gig on the show's U.K. version), and hapless host Steve Jones. A public courtship of Britney Spears (eventually hired along with ex-Disney star Demi Lovato to replace Abdul and Scherzinger), followed by breathless reports on how the volatile paparazzi magnet was faring during auditions, kept "X Factor" atop the gossip cycle -- at least until "Idol" upped the ante by (presumably) parting ways with all three of its judges, hiring ultimate diva Mariah Carey and stirring the pot with endless speculation over the other, still unnamed, replacements.

You could have easily forgotten all about "The Voice," with its stable cast of coaches and host. Although four new mentors, or assistant coaches, were named -- Mary J. Blige for Adam Levine, Michael Buble for Blake Shelton, Rob Thomas for Cee Lo Green, and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong for Christina Aguilera, none of whom seem like natural fits -- most of the show's changes were procedural.

After the blind auditions -- TV's most exciting, thanks to the inspired "spinning chairs" gimmick -- each coach will begin with 16 singers. Battle-round duets will reduce the rosters to eight apiece ... but there's a twist. Each coach can "steal" two battle-round losers, adding them to his or her own team. (The spinning chairs will be involved in this process. There's no gimmick too inspired to run into the ground.) Each team of 10 will then be cut down to five via a new "knockout round," which is a head-to-head competition between two teammates, not (thankfully) a forced duet, which has turned out to be a poor way to assess talent. (The steal idea, which acknowledges that strong singers are unfairly eliminated in the forced-duet context of the battle rounds, tries to put a bandage on this problem.) The final five weeks should chop the teams down as before until one singer from each team remains.

"X Factor" has announced a few non-personnel changes of its own, involving the four categories into which it assigns its teams. This season, singers will compete as individuals 12-16 (aka the kiddies), individuals 17-24 (the core group), individuals 25-plus (the oldsters, starting five years younger than last year's "over-30s"), and groups (or losers, judging from last season's dismal results). Otherwise, you'll still see the auditions, directly modeled on "Idol"'s good-or-excruciatingly-bad format, though possibly qualitatively better this year thanks to new rules permitting singers already signed to management and agency contracts. One other wrinkle: The auditions will be host-less, since (despite endless bandyings of actors and reality-show types) that position has not yet been filled.

Then, after audition winners are chosen and assigned to categories (some groups will likely be assembled from close-call individual auditioners), we'll endure the boot camps of the rich-and-famous phase, in which the judges train and choose their teams at their far-flung, opulent homes, followed by the final week-by-week eliminations, also modeled on "Idol"'s.

But let's not kid ourselves: New viewers are not going to tune in because the age limits have shifted. They'll be curious about Britney.

Of course, it was a ridiculous idea. Having Britney Spears -- a vocalist of limited range, even more limited expressiveness and a widely reported penchant for lip-syncing her way through live shows -- judging singing ability is as absurd as ... um, having Paula Abdul do it. OK, so the precedent's been set and nobody seems to care all that much. But in the case of Britney, who seems to walk around in a daze much of the time and is barely intelligible in some of her interviews, even having her talk on-air seems preposterous.

But as I said, people will be curious. And they love train wrecks. Not that they'll see any for the first several weeks, because everything up to the actual eliminations is taped. Which means the producers can control how Britney comes off.

There's good reason for watching just to see which approach they take, however. Will they try to make her sound intelligent, cherry-picking carefully staged instances of snappy exchanges with Simon and sympathetic-yet-perceptive verdicts on auditioners? Or will they depict her on the brink of a flare-up, hinting that the possibility of a future meltdown is there? Or just let her natural vacuity hang out?

My bet's on a combo platter of all three, with an emphasis on No. 1 and No. 2 (No. 3 is bound to show up no matter how much video manipulation they do). That means several weeks of extended tease -- which is, after all, the theme of Britney's career -- before we get to the live shows, where anything actually could happen (at least on the East Coast broadcast).

The big question for "X Factor" and FOX is whether enough of those new, curiosity-driven viewers will stick around that long.

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