‘Rested’ X Factor is struggling for its ‘why’ factor

The ambitious but nervous hopefuls, their dignity on the line, stand under the harsh lights, waiting to hear if they have met the approval of the voting public. Why have they chosen to put themselves through this madness again?

And if they do manage to win somehow, will they really be able to achieve all the things they wanted before they got caught up in the machine? Or will they be forced to kow-tow to a system that is alarmingly bigger and more cut-throat than they are?

But enough about the general election, have you heard about the X Factor? Between the spread of coronavirus and the savage onset of Storm Ciara, the removal of Simon Cowell’s talent contest from television screens, for one year at least, has slipped through the news cracks. That in itself tells a story of how far this once unassailable show has fallen.

A decade ago, the seventh series of the X Factor was watched by almost 18 million people in the UK, making Cowell's juggernaut the most watched programme on British television that year. In the Republic, too, it was big business, with the 2010 final seen by an average of 930,500 viewers – a channel record for TV3 that remained intact until the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

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That recession-bound, pre-Netflix year in Ireland, nobody had any money to do much except watch Louis Walsh blink effusively through their screens on Saturday and Sunday nights, while a deep run for Ireland's Mary Byrne and a third-place finish for a one-fifth-Irish boyband by the name of One Direction didn't do its appeal any harm at all.

But the X Factor was soon stripped of its, well, X factor. The show entered a trend of decline, clawing the comparatively modest UK audience of 7 million for the climax of the last proper series in 2018. Ratings for two half-hearted “mini-series” in 2019, the X Factor: Celebrity and the X Factor: The Band, sank below the 3 million mark.

For two decades now, formats involving weekly eliminations and live shows have been the mainstay of weekend nights on linear channels, and not just for singing

The X Factor has become a show people used to get a takeaway in for and tweet about, but don’t anymore. Its problems stem from the fact its “prize” of guaranteed pop stardom for the winner (or even the finalists) no longer sounds even vaguely legitimate. The X Factor can’t just tick along, barely watched. The whole premise of the series is predicated on its own popularity. Once that ebbed away, the authority of its judging panel travelled from dubious to null and void.

‘Rested’ for 2020

When the Sun reported that the show would be “rested” this year – a decision interestingly attributed to Cowell and not broadcaster ITV – I immediately thought of something a television producer told me a couple of years ago about the format’s prospects: “The dogs on the street know if that one was a horse, it would have been shot five years ago.”

Amazingly, it still hasn’t got the bullet officially. The ominous position is that Cowell will spend 2020 thinking up ways to “reinvigorate it for the future”. Indeed, the ink is scarcely dry on his company Syco Entertainment’s new contract with ITV for five more series of Britain’s Got Talent and one more of the X Factor, now postponed until 2021.

Maybe when the X Factor does return it will pull off an I’m a Celebrity-style ratings resurgence. Then again, maybe it will prove to be its final outing before it takes its place alongside Opportunity Knocks in the great television archive in the sky.

The television business is meant to be cyclical, but if that’s true, this sure has been one long cycle. The X Factor, which first went on air in 2004, is part of an ageing generation of singing contest shows that dates back to 2001’s Popstars (from which the eccentrically punctuated Hear’Say and longer-lasting Liberty X were born). For two decades now, formats involving weekly eliminations and live shows have been the mainstay of weekend nights on linear channels, and not just for singing.

The moment will come for the formats of the early 2000s to be pensioned off and make way for something fresher

While the X Factor has been busy honing the brash art of plucking unknowns from tension-ridden auditions and dangling their fame-dreams in front of them, the BBC has offered the fully realised vision of celebrities and people who are celebrity-adjacent competing on a creatively lit dancefloor for nothing less tangible than a glitterball trophy and a nice participation fee.

Dancing triumphs

Strictly Come Dancing, which also began in 2004, has dug its heels into the schedule by doubling down on its fairytale prince-and-princess vibe. It is no accident that the cheap-but-fun RTÉ / Shinawil version of the BBC show, which like other overseas editions is titled Dancing with the Stars, has found it easier to break with ballroom convention and beat Strictly to same-sex celebrity-professional pairings – if only for one week – courtesy of Brian Dowling and pro Kai Widdrington's quickstep and Lottie Ryan and pro Emily Barker's Charleston on Saturday.

With two male professionals dancing in hold during one routine in its most recent series, Strictly has been edging its way to more inclusive fairytales too. And unlike the X Factor, it remains in sparkling health, earning its slot rather than retaining it out of the failure of new programme ideas to stick.

But in television as in politics, everything has its time. Sooner (in the X Factor’s case) or later (in Strictly’s), the moment will come for the formats of the early 2000s to be pensioned off and make way for something fresher. A hiatus of about 15 years or so will probably do before the inevitable revival on Netflix.