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The X Factor 2016

(March 2015)

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LL
Larry the Loafer
The X Factor has created a huge number of artists who went on to develop careers. The Voice UK has not. TVUK can not be considered as a replacement for TXF.


Depends if it can leech off the same PR machines that TXF uses.
BR
Brekkie
Isn't one of the biggest problems with X Factor that the whole charade is entirely inconsequential? There is absolutely no jeopardy or point to it anymore.

Auditions: some people get 'four yeses' only to disappear and never be heard of again, making the auditions fairly inconsequential. good contestants are brought in from stage school and pretty much guaranteed a place in the final.

Boot camp: they put so many people through they have to bin some of them off and at this stage we don't care about any of the contestants.

Six chair challenge: also pointless, because next week it's Judges Houses which might as well be called 'three chair challenge'. Why not cut out the middle man and go from boot camp to 'three chair challenge'?

Judges Houses: also inconsequential because you can get booted off, and brought back the following week as a wildcard anyway.

The live shows: winning is inconsequential because the decent finalists all get record deals anyway.

Agree so much with that, especially the Six Chair Challenge part which has fallen apart thanks to Cowell not following his own rules and allowing acts who lose their chair to be bought back five minutes later. I did think the US version was mad a couple of years back to ditch judges houses and just do the 4 Chair Challenge but this year for us it would have made so much sense, especially with the reduced number of live shows. The talent wasn't strong enough to justify a wildcard, and things like the judges picking an act viewers put in 10th place on the tour just doesn't show the voting audience the respect that to be fair the show has in the past.

The jeopardy has gone from Cowell himself too - he admits himself he likes the arena auditions so he can see how the audience reacts, but he is far too swayed now by what they think rather than delivering the brutal honesty he is known for. That adds to the feeling people are being waved through without good reason.


I do think should the show survive beyond 2016 they will almost certainly have to make cuts to reflect the falling ratings and the cheaper price tag of The Voice, and there are easy places to make cuts - doing rooms rather than arena auditions, axing judges houses in favour of a 3/4 Chair Challenge (or any studio based cut) and then putting the live shows all back on one night. Really though Cowell is probably best just playing the long game and letting the show slip away next year - ITV will probably be begging come 2020 for it to return.
WH
Whataday Founding member
I was always surprised they never made more of the fact that the contestants all live in a house together (Big Brother style). Surely at its peak it would have been worthy of a daily show on ITV2. Cheap TV using personalities that are already paid to be there.
CW
Charlie Wells Moderator
Picking up on trivialmatters & Brekkie's posts it's not helped that this year there have been reports of acts who got 4 'yeses' receiving an email a few weeks later from producers saying their place in bootcamp isn't guaranteed, apparently due to the judges allowing to many through. Maybe if too many are getting through to bootcamp it should be changed so that only those with a yes from all judges automatically go through and those with just a (split) majority vote have to face an additional round. The number who could can get through this round could be based on places left at bootcamp, and could even be simply chosen in a similar way to how Britain's Got Talent selects it's live show acts.

I'd also agree with Brekkie about changing the judge's auditions to be in rooms. It might help reduce the number of those getting through the first phase as there wouldn't be the audience to influence them. If they still wanted to have an arena audience I'd be inclined to have it part of the 'bootcamp' section. I've not seen the 'six chair challenge' episodes, though I'd agree they do seem to be rather similar to the judges houses section or at least seems slightly odd having both.
BR
Brekkie
Picking up on trivialmatters & Brekkie's posts it's not helped that this year there have been reports of acts who got 4 'yeses' receiving an email a few weeks later from producers saying their place in bootcamp isn't guaranteed, apparently due to the judges allowing to many through. Maybe if too many are getting through to bootcamp it should be changed so that only those with a yes from all judges automatically go through and those with just a (split) majority vote have to face an additional round. The number who could can get through this round could be based on places left at bootcamp, and could even be simply chosen in a similar way to how Britain's Got Talent selects it's live show acts.

Although to be fair the latter is exactly what they do, only off screen. It's part of the process every year for both shows that many who make it through the auditions don't make it through to the next round on screen at all, although one year The X Factor got "everyone" to turn up and then culled a third of them at the very beginning of Boot Camp. Makes much more sense to do that by e-mail.
SO
SOL
Multi posted:
JAS84 posted:
Yeah - One Direction and Olly Murs didn't win but are doing better than the actual winners from their years.


2004 : Winner was Steve Brookstein, who went onto do nothing. G4 were in the final three and released albums up until recently, they split and revived last year.

2005 : Winner was Shayne Ward, who has done barely anything in the ten years since The X Factor, apart from join Corrie earlier this year, which doesn't really showcase his music skills but more his terrible acting.

2006 : Leona Lewis won, made a name for herself here then ran off to America to be never heard of again. Ray Quinn was just behind her, and since went onto do Dancing on Ice and other projects. However, as said above, a lot of those that are memorable have already established themselves within the industry, such as Quinn who was a former Brookie star.

2007 : Leon Jackson won this year, and Louis Walsh forgot his name on an episode of Celebrity Juice once. Same Difference came 3rd, and have done pantomimes etc since.

2008 : Alexandra Burke won, and like Leona Lewis, later made a name for herself in the states. JLS were second and were world-wide hits.

2009 : Joe McElderry won, and will now turn up to the opening of an envelope. Olly Murs and Stacey Soloman were just behind him, and have had good careers since, notably Murs.

2010 : Matt Cardle won this year. One Direction were third, and are now the biggest boyband in the world.

2011 : Probably the only year a group has won and continued to be successful - Little Mix.

2012/2013 : Winners were James Arthur and Sam Bailey, both of which have disappeared since winning. Nobody from their series have made particular impressions since.

2014 : Ben Haenow (or Whonow?) won, Fleur East was clearly the most popular and a few weeks after the series ended, she was signed by Cowell.

Now ITV have bought The Voice, I think it's time that The X Factor is atleast rested, it's clearly a dire format that has been unsuccessfully rehashed over the years, and IMO, has met its end.


I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I stopped watching after 2010 when Gary Barlow was joining in 2011 and the other judges, with the exception of Louis, left the panel. I wasn't impressed and deliberately avoided the X Factor.

In 2013, when Sharon Osborne rejoined, I watched again as I like her, however I stopped watching after the auditions as I was simply bored with what I was watching. I felt it was like watching paint dry it was that boring! Very little had changed.

I very quickly realised that this show was simply about the judges and their egos, than the 'talent' of the singers.

There is a formula to the X Factor that hasn't changed since 2004; the public vote for a winner, the winner releases a Christmas song, then disappears until around August of the following year, releases a single and album, it flops, and they disappear. Meanwhile, a new series of the X Factor is on the TV.

The record label and Simon show little or no commitment to the winners, so it's karma. The public are giving up on the X Factor and it was bound to happen eventually.
BR
Brekkie
SOL posted:
There is a formula to the X Factor that hasn't changed since 2004; the public vote for a winner, the winner releases a Christmas song, then disappears until around August of the following year, releases a single and album, it flops, and they disappear. Meanwhile, a new series of the X Factor is on the TV.

I actually think the problem is the formula the viewers want has changed but the show has been unable to deliver on it. In the Cowell-less years (and probably the year or two beforehand) they were getting a good mix of talent which felt current and reflected the industry as a whole - not all the finalists but enough to make it worth watching, with the bland usually weeded out (apart from the one who always makes it too far). This year I'm finding the acts very talent show 1.0 - the sort of thing you expected on Pop Idol where they were good singers, but not much beyond that.
Last edited by Brekkie on 25 November 2015 6:34pm
SO
SOL
I get what you're saying, but as I stopped watching years ago, I wouldn't get to see any of the talent, unless they were on other shows I watched. And there's a lot like me who have switched off from the X Factor, who'll probably never switch it back on.
:-(
A former member
I think the biggest problem this year is that they want Louisa to win so much that they are sabotaging practically everybody else to make it happen. They play so many games and employ so many little tricks to subtly do this that, in the end, it becomes slightly unpleasant to watch.

They've done it for years but never to the extent they've been doing it this year (possibly because the shorter run of live shows means they need to be more accurate). Examples include the whole thing with Anton the weekend just gone, the treatment of Monica by dressing her in such a way that she was uncomfortable, repeatedly hammering home the point that acts like Seann and 4th Impact are from other countries - all vote dampening techniques to try and engineer the right result for the show. They seem completely unwilling to play with a level playing field by giving everyone a decent shot at it.

The show has become more and more noticeably dishonest. I mean - Nick voted to save Anton over Monica. Monica is infinitely more relevant, cool and talented, and has a style that wouldn't be out of place on Radio 1. Yet the week after, Nick had a go at Anton for coming across as fake and not being the sort of artist he'd buy an album of.

The manipulation has always been there, but they've become very sloppy with it.

But I *still* love it.
TR
trivialmatters
If they want to spice it up, they should do the first auditions live.

They never would, of course, because it doesn't play into their total control of the situation. They wouldn't be able to film fake standing ovations from the audience or tell them who to boo and cheer, as they did the year I went to the auditions.

Ultimately though, there is just no point watching any of it until the live shows, because the process of whittling the contestants down is irrelevant. Even after the whole charade, they announce one of the girls they binned off is back as a wildcard. What's the point? If you're out, you should stay out - they should raise the stakes and say anybody in the live finals who doesn't win isn't allowed to release a single for a year.

Give them something to play for!
HJ
HJL
I do think they need to bin off Judges Houses, which was an absolute joke this year, and have the Bootcamp stage (which was actually bearable this year!) followed by the 3 Chair Challenge. Which should be Live. The major issue I had with the voice from day 1 was that it felt over produced, and I feel like its becoming more obvious with the X Factor also.

The competition has become one to see who can come second... As someone stated earlier, the only properly success story for a winner was Little Mix, give or take a couple who were more successful in the States. Fleur East stated a number of weeks ago that she was wanting to distance herself from the X Factor, although with a Debut that cheesy, Im sure thats easier said than done. If the winners title wasn't so damning and insignificant given that any promising contestants are offered contract, I recon we would see a better competition- but still a weak show.
RS
Rob_Schneider
The competition has become one to see who can come second...


Let's have a look.

2004: G4 (lost to Steve Brookstein)
Had slightly sh*t cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, moderate classical career.

2005: Andy Abraham (lost to Shayne Ward)
Had a couple of singles then came last at Eurovision 2008; Terry Wogan quit shortly after. Last seen as the interval act at various corporate functions.

2006: Ray Quinn (lost to Leona Lewis)
Won Dancing On Ice, did lots of Panto. Scouse who came second.

2007: Rhydian Roberts (lost to Leon Jackson)
Had a short-lived classical career. Was the second real tw*t act after Chico during the show but could actually sing quite well.

2008: JLS (lost to Alexandra Burke)
Had very good career; along with One Direction and Little Mix one of the show's most successful groups.

2009: Olly Murs (lost to Joe McElderry)
Having good pop career despite dying on his arse as a TV presenter.

2010: Rebecca Ferguson (lost to Matt Cardle)
Had a couple of singles. Another Scouse who came second.

2011: Marcus Collins (lost to Little Mix)
Did a w*nk cover of Seven Nation Army. Another Scouse who came sec- hey, there's a pattern here.

2012: Jahmene Douglas (lost to James Arthur)
Did that John Lewis cover of Titanium, and not a lot else.

2013: Nicholas MacDonald (lost to Sam Bailey)
Who?

2014: Fleur East (lost to Ben Haenow)
Made Uptown Funk a massive UK hit. Now singing ASDA's Christmas advert theme which sounds suspiciously like, er, Uptown Funk.

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