August 22, 2009

X-Factor’s Back

I see the BBC was advertising the new series of X-Factor this morning – which struck me as pretty curious. I’d have thought by now that this much-hyped money-making machine for Simon Cowell might have slipped off our screens… but no, now the BBC apparently can’t get enough of it either.

Weirdly, the BBC’s excuse for promoting a crap programme on a rival channel was that they had an undercover reporter auditioning for the show. Extra comedy value was then added by the floozie in question being titled ‘on-line reporter’ whilst sneering that some people will do anything to get on to television.

Further shocks were revealed. Apparently producers hand out banners and get the audience to behave like performing monkeys. Who would have thought? Rather tastelessly, the BBC then got right into the real reason most people watch X-Factor… the fact that it is an updated version of a Victorian freak show.

I’m not sure quite when it became good TV to laugh at unfortunate people (probably when Big Brother was invented)… but it doesn’t make it any less unpalatable. Granted, there is the convenient excuse that the people in X-Factor know what they are letting themselves in for. But this is balanced out by the BBC pretending that what goes on in that puerile show is somehow newsworthy.,

However, it struck me that there is something newsworthy about X-Factor. People seem to think it is a talent show… when it is actually a lack-of-talent show. It is highly formulaic as well. Even before the show starts you know there will be a kid who looks like a puppy dog, a shouty girl in a short skirt – and a talent less Scotsman….plus a few other wannabees to make up the numbers.

I think even Simon Cowell has given up the pretence that this is a search for talent. Virtually every winner is quietly dropped once income from their Xmas number one has been banked. Which just goes to show that if something is pushed hard enough on television….people will buy it even when they already know it complete rubbish.

This brings us back rather neatly to the new series of X-Factor.