I’d do a straight swap of X Factor with BGT. It’s the biggest bit of their schedule of the whole year, being the run up to Christmas. If anything can pull the ratings from Strictly, it’s BGT.
They need a new Saturday night big show, and this is the problem for ITV - it seems they have pinned their hopes on X Factor always being there from late August to early December. ITV does not seem to have thought long term about the decline of the show and the falling ratings.
Yes the show attracts a young audience, but the overall ratings are appalling. It is not just a one million gap, some weeks in 2017 and 2018 there gap was the size of the Grand Canyon, with nearly four million viewer difference between X Factor and SCD.
ITV really need to think about moving BGT to the autumn, and scrapping the Royal Variety Performance as part of the prize. BGT is the only show that could do really well up against SCD in 2020.
Completely disagree, I think Holly breathed new life into I’m a Celeb last year so I’d greatly welcome her back to any of the other programmes if she can refresh them.
X Factor desperately needs some time off and this (if true) clearly is a way of giving the show a break without being off air. I’m not sure it’ll cut it though. An article on the Daily Mirror suggests it’ll be a mashup of a Celeb edition and “champions of champions”.....
ITV have I’m A Celebrity from Mid-November, which could easily move to starting in the 8-9 slot after Strictly has finished on BBC One. Realisticly this only leaves ITV with September till Mid-Nov to fill. Surely a new format of 6-8 weeks would do the trick?
Reports were Simon wanted to do an Andrew Lloyd Webber style “Greatest Showman for the west end” show. Would this really be a disaster for September 2020?
They need a new Saturday night big show, and this is the problem for ITV - it seems they have pinned their hopes on X Factor always being there from late August to early December. ITV does not seem to have thought long term about the decline of the show and the falling ratings.
Yes the show attracts a young audience, but the overall ratings are appalling. It is not just a one million gap, some weeks in 2017 and 2018 there gap was the size of the Grand Canyon, with nearly four million viewer difference between X Factor and SCD.
ITV really need to think about moving BGT to the autumn, and scrapping the Royal Variety Performance as part of the prize. BGT is the only show that could do really well up against SCD in 2020.
Let’s do a fact check here — the ratings for The X Factor are not ‘appalling’, satisfactory would probably be a more accurate description. Any show averaging over 5m in the current television landscape is doing fine. Kevin Lygo has said multiple times TXF still turns a profit, so why would ITV axe it? The 16-34 audience is important commercially, and the show is still performing well in attracting those viewers. Putting BGT against Strictly would be a ridiculous decision, and would harm both shows.
Reports were Simon wanted to do an Andrew Lloyd Webber style “Greatest Showman for the west end” show. Would this really be a disaster for September 2020?
There's already a musical based on the storyline of the Greatest Showman called
Barnum
. Great show it is too.
They need a new Saturday night big show, and this is the problem for ITV - it seems they have pinned their hopes on X Factor always being there from late August to early December. ITV does not seem to have thought long term about the decline of the show and the falling ratings.
Yes the show attracts a young audience, but the overall ratings are appalling. It is not just a one million gap, some weeks in 2017 and 2018 there gap was the size of the Grand Canyon, with nearly four million viewer difference between X Factor and SCD.
ITV really need to think about moving BGT to the autumn, and scrapping the Royal Variety Performance as part of the prize. BGT is the only show that could do really well up against SCD in 2020.
Let’s do a fact check here — the ratings for The X Factor are not ‘appalling’, satisfactory would probably be a more accurate description. Any show averaging over 5m in the current television landscape is doing fine. Kevin Lygo has said multiple times TXF still turns a profit, so why would ITV axe it? The 16-34 audience is important commercially, and the show is still performing well in attracting those viewers. Putting BGT against Strictly would be a ridiculous decision, and would harm both shows.
The 'civilian' version as we know it has definitely been cancelled. The production team working on it (up until this week) were casting a show that didn't exist anymore. Whatever the reasons are, I'm sure will be made clear in due course. Kevin Lygo is full of hot air - he's the director of television, and of course he has to be seen saying these things.
The latest murmurings are that a
Battle of the Stars
-style show is likely to air in place of it. Very much taking everything with a slight pinch of salt still, though.
If you consider believing a poster who has given genuine ITV inside information before that turned out to be true mad, plus a second poster who works in the industry corroborating the first poster, then sure.
It wouldn't be the first time people have been duped here by a genuine insider. No matter how likely it may seem it's still not CONFIRMED until ITV say so.
And in any other business, makes no sense whatsoever.
If a once great solid football team, winning trophies and in the top half of the leauge table slowly, stops winning and finds itself at the other end of the table, and dumped out of cup competitions in the first round for around three consecutive seasons - I doubt the owner of the club would stand around and go "yeah, things aren't as good as the once were, but whilst we are still in the same leauge, that we were once competitive in - we'll still compete"
Nope. Widespread changes from team management to bringing in new players, to get the feelgood factor back and improve results.
Then after all those costly changes the team actually performs worse and are relegated from the league altogether. The owners then vow to to not listen to the keyboard bashing, self proclaimed experts on running football clubs again.
The series peak for
Battle of the Stars
was only 8m in 2006 - so it would be a tall order to beat or even match regular X Factor's regular 2018 ratings with a rehash of that. Of course, it wouldn't make much sense to strip it either.
If they are indeed going down a celebrity route, I expect they will try and distance it as far as possible from the earlier version. I could see them retaining some of the audition phases too, as it would fill some hours and generate some great tabloid headlines as judges "reject" contestants.
16 contestants would be (just) enough for a three chair challenge, judges' houses and 6 live weeks, which doesn't seem much bigger than the usual cast for this sort of thing.
Interesting X Factor story in the Popbitch mail out today. Cowell's not budging and is using BGT as leverage. Also:
"Curious how Cowell's most loyal lapdogs are now casually reporting that Syco's contract with ITV runs to the end of this year – when as recently as November they were insisting that X Factor wasn't in crisis and was under contract to run until 2022."