ITV Programming Thread

Britain's Got Talent was stuck in development hell for absolutely ages, to the extent the Beeb rushed their similar format When Will I Be Famous on air first as a spoiler - http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/When_Will_I_be_Famous%3F

It never caught on, though. Good job, given one of the judges.

That's generally the case for pilots.

It also took so long that America's Got Talent ended up launching first.

I believe BGT did actually get a commission following that pilot, but after Claudia Rosencrantz left, either Paul Jackson or Simon Shaps cancelled the commission as they didn't like the format.

Even after America's Got Talent did well they took some persuasion, and Cowell has said they tried to pull the plug on the show 3 days before filming started. The show was then of course scheduled across a week in June, which I think some at ITV felt at the time was to get it out of the way quicker. Hopes really were not high, which is ironic as ITV had higher hopes for Syco's other format that year Grease is The Word, which of course flopped.

Sounds like the POG BGT was similar to America’s legendary Gong Show, which was attempted a couple of times in the UK to no success. This Frankie Howard version for C4 emerged recently


And he was reviving a previously failed attempt for Southern Television


For any talent show producers it’s a precarious balance between showing those terrible acts, and making the programme itself look ramshackle. I suppose there was a fear that BGT could have ended up like the Sky talent show presented by Keith Chegwin which has been seen by far more people in clip shows than ever watched it at the time.

TLS studio 2. It did go on ...and on.

I think perhaps the most defining series of BGT was actually the third series in 2009

-Kelly Brook saga
-Susan Boyle
-Hollie Steel
-Stavros Flatley

...oh and that small matter of Diversity

Seemed to give a decent ratings boost to 2010 before starting to level off again

On another note I wonder if Ant and Dec were ever considered when the X Factor came about

Unlikely, considering they hosted Pop Idol.

This is a bit of a half memory I believe Simon would have preferred Ant and Dec for X-Factor in an ideal world, but with the live shows clashing with I'm a Celeb, it was a bit of a no-brainer for them.

It was Studio 1 actually.. I worked on it. The pilot was not for broadcast and involved the acts being sat in the audience and called down to perform a la Price Is Right..

The X Factor would surely have been a lot different with Ant and Dec, a lot more light hearted even if they didn’t go all out on the comedy skits like in Pop Idol. The main show might have felt more like The Xtra Factor did.

As suggested, I would think that given the legal issues there ended up being with how similar The X Factor was to Pop Idol, I think Cowell would have been skating on extremely thin ice if he used Pop Idol's presenters as well.

There was a series of Takeaway during the first series of The X Factor in 2004, and I remember one of the stunts on Takeaway involved someone going from their audience at LWT to The X Factor audience at Fountain.