BB FANS

The news that ITV is bringing back its prime-time talent show The X Factor will gladden hearts across the nation. Who can deny the guilty pleasure of witnessing Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh reducing young pop hopefuls to tears with a few damning words, and possibly even damaging them for life? Great family entertainment, in other words.
But anyone monitoring the recent bumpy fortunes of TV talent lotteries may be surprised by the show’s return. The failure of the Beeb’s unlamented Fame Academy, and reports that America’s latest pop talent search, Rock Star: INXS, is in ratings meltdown, certainly suggest a limited shelf-life for the format.

Likewise, the amusing news that Simon Fuller is suing the makers of The X Factor for breach of copyright, accusing his former business partner Simon Cowell of cannibalising their joint creation Pop Idol, might also have given the programme-makers pause for thought.



In fact, the clunky recipe behind The X Factor remains firmly rooted in ancient small-screen talent shows such as Opportunity Knocks. In an era when reality TV benchmarks such as Big Brother are desperately tweaking their formula to stay relevant, this idiot-proof mainstream format may even work in the pop show’s favour.

But however The X Factor fares in the ratings, it is increasingly evident that this kind of programme is built on a lie. Anyone with the real “X factor” of musical talent and charisma cannot be “created” in TV laboratories, they can only be discovered and nurtured by people with genuine sympathy for the art form. Just consider how many previous TV-created pop idols have disappeared after their overhyped launch: David Sneddon, Alex Parks, Hear’Say and others too forgettable to mention. In other words, these shows fail in their alleged objective of launching new talent.

The truth is, of course, that shows such as The X Factor were never much concerned with promoting their cannon-fodder contestants. Their true purpose is promoting loathsome characters such as Cowell into hugely wealthy “brands” themselves. In that respect, they have been highly successful. But does the spectacle of very rich people making themselves richer really make for good TV?

Whatever its debatable merits as entertainment, there is something genuinely creepy going on in The X Factor and its sister shows. With Cowell firmly in charge, these programmes are the revenge of super-safe family entertainment over rock’n’roll, where parent-friendly notions of cruise-ship “professionalism” snuff out any true spark of creativity.