Now I know most, if not all, on here are way tooooo cool to watch X Factor, but the Mrs and I do like to crash out in front of a log fire on a winter’s evening, crack open a bottle of Shiraz and take in some brain dead TV for an hour or two. There have been some good ones - the years that Matt Cardle won and Leona Lewis - but mostly it is more about the process than the outcome. Like others I used to chuckle at the poor deluded fools who couldnt sing a note but as time went by it became more like a circus freak show and I am glad to see that they dont show many of the rubbish singers now. Reason for posting, ratings. Apparently it is getting blown out of the water by Strictly (now that really isnt my cup of tea and an extra reason to watch Simon’s ever whiter teeth). This year the panel has changed with Rita Ora (great eye candy for the Dads) and Nick Grimshaw (not at all sure who he is supposed to appeal to) but there seems little chemistry there. Louis Walsh was pants but at least there was a bit of frission between him and SC and you were never quite sure whether SC was trying to “out” him or not. Grimshaw has all of the personality of a roadkill badger and if the plan was to make the show cooler, it hasnt worked. Rita, who I thought was ok on The Voice, also lacks an edge and looks arent enough I’m afraid. I have never seen the point of Cheryl Cole or whatever she calls herself nowdays. So the show is going down the tubes but the irony is that this year there seem to be a high number of very decent contestants which also makes me wonder - do people tune in for the performers or for the banter from the panel?
Question - what do you do with a show like X Factor to make it cool and relevant (apart from taking it off the air of course!
).not watched it - thanks to iplayer and the like, the Ayatollah can watch it whilst doing the ironing leaving the big telly free for quality programming such as the Tour de France, rubgy, footie and cricket
How could you make X-Factor cool?
Get a hood and abduct Cowell in a Transit.
Take him to a quiet farm and torture him in an outbuilding.
Get him to admit that his show has badly damaged the industry by pedalling lukewarm musical diarrhea to the simpelton masses who are too lazy to hunt down decent music.
Quiz him on the sickly sugary sob-story formula, and ask him whether he has a soul.
Also get him to admit that the restrictive contracts he offers winners often destroy them as a creative force, and finally torture him until he admits that some of the winners were appalling candidates that he just made into winners for a bet.
Then rough him up a bit more, lower his trouser line by four inches for his own sake, and dump him at the side of a dual carriageway in the early hours, advising him to rethink his TV career.
X Factor is just another reality TV show that occasionally throws up something more enduring than a 5 minute wonder and is one in a line of talent shows that goes back to when TV started. I remember a show called Opportunity Knocks with Hughie Green back in the 60s and 70s that did the same thing. Simon Cowell’s influence in the music industry is much overrated. He is just one of many people trying to find new talent to sell records. The music industry has changed out of all recognition. The no 1 record used to be a big deal. I doubt if many people knows what it is now. The only time the media makes a fuss is over the Christmas no 1 and I never understood what made that more special than the other no 1s through the year! More people make careers in the industry through the usual methods than through XF and BGT. Most of the stuff you hear on the radio and download yourself has nothing to do with SC and those shows. Its really just a bit of entertainment (or not if you dont like it) to fill up TV slots through the winter and to flog a few records as a by product.
I’m not sure what I hate most; The X-Factor, or the fact that my usually intelligent spawn love that shit. I am actually banned from watching it with the family, on account of usually being able to tell whether someone gets through or not, based on the backing track.
I love the people that say “it has always been my dream”, especially the older lot who can remember a time without X-Factor. Missed two tricks there, fuckers.
- You should have joined a real band and made music.
- If X-Factor has always been your dream, why the fuck didn’t you invent it before Simon Cowell thieved the format from Simon Fuller? You could have launched a thousand singing careers with the dough!
I’m in a similar position as you SOG where the mrs loves it and I have been happy for her to watch it while I have a drink and chill before match or the day comes on. However, this year is terrible and just more of the same but with crap judges. I have refused to watch it on the grounds that it is crap and we can record it and she can watch it during the day time (she is on maternity leave).
She says that she watches my crap but this is no longer on the same level at match of the day, this is more like me making her watch a lower league match during the international break as the skates and some other has been club slog out a 0-0 draw. I don’t force her to watch that, she shouldn’t expect me to watch X factor. Plus it was so bad I had to up the alcohol levels, one more “I didn’t like it, (long pause) I loved it” and I would have been on the white lightning.
I managed to wean Mrs SOG off of the soap operas so I can live with this but do find myself distrcated more and more by my iphone. Yep, the “I didnt like it” phrase has well worn out a welcome it never had and Pap’s comments about the inane crap spouted by the competitors every year about how it means so much to them and it is their dream are spot on. I guess I am of an age where I watch TV in the evenings when not going out and there have been some great programmes over the years that it was worth staying in for. My kids rarely watch TV and I suppose that is the problem now - it is all about producing cheap reality TV for smaller markets. Without SKY Atlantic and companies like HBO I would really struggle to find much to raise the interest levels.
Its not all shite. It keeps Ms Marple, Blind Date, Murder she wrote and Mr & Mrs off the screens on a Sat night
Oh please God, make this so.
p.s. can you also nuke Britains Got Talent and I’m a Celebrity
I had forgotten about I’m a Celebrity…that is due soon. How much longer can they keep it up? The novelty of seeing semi famous people eating bugs wore off long ago. All of the set pieces are old hat, down to the obligatory hot chick having a shower in her bikini. And with this show comes those dreadful Iceland ads all the way to Christmas… 
Hey, I’ve found a formula that works, rather than making fresh new programmes next, let’s scrape the bottom of this genre barrel until our fingers bleed!!
Decorating, cooking, singing, antiques, dancing and celebs on holiday… it’s the lazy path to ratings in an era when cheap = good.
Nope, never liked it from the start.
Missus does the pub and club circuit, she’s more than decent, not superb, but more than decent. When she went for an audition it was with the show’s producers who didn’t want her yet somehow the “crap” singers made it through to the TV stages, this would have been after 3 or 4 more auditions BTW. Shows you what they are really after. the really good or the crap for TV ratings!
A couple of seasons ago really brought home the cruelty of it all when some young girl (who couldn’t sing) made the TV auditions and Cowell ripped into her. Har father was really angry, and rightly so, and demanded to know why his daughter had made it through 4 auditions to get this far. It was falsely building her hopes up!
And tyhe sob stories, yea gods the sob stories really get my Goat…
Cannot stand the manufactured crap. Pick up a guitar, hit some drums, just go and play some instruments with your mates.
Terrible program, promoting a style of music that needs murdering and killed off for good! I refuse to watch it or know anything about it… It is harder work than just sitting gorping at the screen, that’s for sure!
Entertainment… Bollocks is it!
Graham Norton is not a fan.
"I haven’t watched X Factor the past few years because it just seems so long now – it’s endless. Also, the people aren’t very good, so to all the judges’ comments of ‘I’d buy your album tomorrow’ you think, ‘You’re never having an album’. You wouldn’t throw 50p at them if they were busking in the tube. I think it’s lost its credibility.”
There is room on TV for a decent talent show and I thought The Voice might do it (at least the contestants can all sing) but it struggles to keep the interest going once the chair turning bit is over. As for putting people on the stage who cannot sing - it is just plain cruel.
Thankfully, my wife’s daughters are now of an age where they have no interest in the X Factor. I can remember being subjected to it a few years ago, and it really is dire, so I’m very glad not to have it on TV while I’m in the room.
On the down side, said daughters have now graduated to Made in Chelsea. Ye gods what a load of shite - I normally do the washing up and brush the dog* while they’re watching it, as I fear my brain will turn to mush if I’m exposed to more than a few minutes at a time. On the other hand, it’s good to see that something is being done to help the over-privileged.
* Not a euphemism
My kids went through a Made in Chelsea phase, thankfully they live with their mother so I wasnt subjected to much of it. There are really a lot of self deluded people around who seem to think their vacuous lives are so interesting that they need to have them filmed (TOWIE too).
Shows like the X factor, TOWIE e.t.c were one of the key reasons why I used to spend a lot of professional development time focussed on the development of intrinsic motivation (I am a primary teacher).
Children (particularly, in my experience, in deprived areas) seemed to focus their attentions and aspirations to these flash in the pan non celebrities. I always felt it was my duty to work on developing their ability to self affirm/peer affirm and realise that satisfication should come from a sense of self pride, tackling obstacles and hard work rather than external praise and attention, especially when it is so focussed on the superficial and (again my opinion) fatuous. These shows really do uncover the worst kind of attention seeking.
I hate the thought of children I taught wasting their unique abilities in the pursuit of the reverse phoenix effect (without the glorious ressurection) that comes from these shows instead of learning to take pride in their ability to work with people, create with their hands or think carefully e.t.c
Sadly, TV is never going to create programs about unique, hard working individuals who make a difference in peoples lives when they can roll out crap, advertising and social media friendly chum without giving too much of a damn what happens to those who step into the ring.
Watched it last week with Mrs SOG. Log fire, bottle of wine, all set for the evening. They announced that the theme for the week was all about what made the contestants “them”. Something like “this is me”. This will be interesting I thought. They will get to sing the song they like rather than be force fed with something they arent happy with and we might get an insight into what they are in to. Really? No. Not surprisingly and very clearly on camera, the contestants were given their song “choice” by a member of the production team. If they were lucky they got a choice out of two songs. Woohoo. Real insight into their personalities!
This week it was all about reinvention so two black dudes did a One Direction song in the same way that they had been performing throughout the series and the panel wet themselves. Other performers actually tried to actually “reinvent” themselves and got slated. One poor sap was forced to sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow (this happens once every series despite Simon Cowell having a thing about how artists need to be “current”), seriously, WTF?
What bothers me more is that I used to be able to neck the wine, enjoy toasting my toes and letting it all wash over me, muttering the occasional “that wasnt too shite” every now and again to placate Mrs SOG. Now I am turning into Angry of Tunbridge Wells and it is affecting my blood pressure.
Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!