I honestly don't know what there is to get about Gary. He has the personality of a tree and has spent pretty much the entire series doing a not very convincing Simon Cowell impression.

It's hardly an X factor crisis is it? The series was seen to be a massive success in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and this series has outperformed all of them, and looks set to be on a par with 2008 (the highest-rated series at the time).

It was always bound to drop down at some point, I genuinely don't get all this talk of a crisis. Yes, they won't be pleased that it's dropped, but it's still the highest-rated show on television!

true the show is not yet in a crisis, but this has all the warning signs. Ratings down year on year, and going down over the series, rather than up.

How they handle this now, is very important to the shows future, right now it needs to show its strength, and avoid the term "crisis" like financial experts avoid the word recession.

In the long term, the show can blame the new judging line up, and try a new line up next year.

Yep - panic stations will only hurt things more.

On 'the twist' - it would have worked if it were down to public vote. Chuck one from each category out when they get the lowest vote.
And allow the judges to maybe save one of them.

I also think they need more inner-competition. Have a week with no help - the acts need to sort, songs - set up, clothing - all themselves.

Challenge them with the themes!! Strictly can create 'oh am not good at the Samba' and have it climax with either a complete failure or a major success. X Factor needs that - atm its just 'are they good or bad?' no emotional connection.

I also think in future they shouldn't do 'sections' but that all the mentors would start with 4 acts, one from each section - they lose one each in the first week - then continue onwards.
That way all acts get attention as their all different. Groups are now competiting. Girls vs Girls. Boys vs boys.
Judge vs Judge.

Oh I just fixed X Factor
The key is competition in my view. Something The Voice looks like it'll do very well at with things like Battle Rounds.

They've done as good a job of avoiding using the word 'crisis' as the financiers have of using the word 'recession'.

Watching The X Factor results show I think I've decided why viewers are switching off - Dermot O'Leary.

How is it that ITV have never managed to find a competent host for this show?

well I obviously dont expect them to listen to my advice however a few years back, people were being very careful not to use the "r word", now they are trying not to say "double dip recession"

Gary has been a big let down. Hes obviously no idea what to do and last week it was hilariously obvious he'd be reading the criticism as he did become Simon Cowell...only charmless.

Tulisa ain't brilliant but shes doing very well and her and Louis worked amazingly well together.
You can't get rid of Louis - namely cause he takes the flack for joke acts, and this year his two contestants are the only reason to watch the show!! (Who else would put through Kitty and actually be able to work with her?

Kelly - gone. Shes just awful.

I'd love Dannii back as head judge and if the show is careful it can maybe find a big enough star who'll bring an exciting aspect to judging (they can't just be big, they have to be different)

In fact, this series of X Factor hasn't gone below 11 million in officials (not including +1).

The X Factor didn't even first get an audience of 11 million until the 2007 FINAL, four series in!

All well and good but (and perhaps nobody told you this) its 2011 now. The expectations of how The X Factor should perform and the performance that is sold to advertisers is dramatically different from 2007.

Dermot oversaw the biggest rise the show has seen - he's not the problem.

I think he's a good presenter anyway; better on the main show than the results as he can work with the acts and judges more. I watched the X Factor USA last night and couldn't believe how poor Steve Jones was.

X Factor should get a huge peek tonight with this shock bottom 2

Samwise - people tuning in for bottom will mostly tune in whatever.

Why be sarcastic to me? Not very nice.

But from the post we saw a few days ago, the advertisers appear to be very happy – it's still the biggest show on television, and everyone still wants their advert to be shown during XF. So my point stands – this 'crisis' talk is hugely overblown.

The peak may well be 12.5m tonight - last night's show averaged 9.59m inc HD
Last edited by grahamzxy : 30-10-2011 at 21:15

He's better than Steve Jones to be sure (but lets not even start on the conversation of how spectacularly badly they put X Factor US together) but he is still amazingly useless. I actually can't remember if he was always this bad or if he's just lost interest at this point. Maybe he really is pissed that Steve Jones got the US job instead of him (I know I would be) but he seems to have lost the ability to hold a basic conversation. He can't talk to the judges, the acts or the guest performers in anything close to a normal fashion. And his 'interviews' with the guest performers are shockingly bad. He just walks onto the stage and essentially says 'what do you want us to buy?' and 'when can we buy that?' and then leaves them floundering on the stage whilst he awkwardly delivers a link whilst swaying. I really cannot put into words how much his inability to stand still annoys me by the way.

Steve's okay but he's out of his depth on The X Factor USA, why they didn't poach Ryan Seacrest from Idol.

I think if schedules allow it, they'll try and get Simon back in place of Gary who could use Take That as an excuse to leave, unsure about Kelly and Tulisa, think they'll keep Tulisa and replace Kelly with either Nicole Scherzinger or Dannii.

I'm being sarcastic because you're digging up numbers from four years ago to suggest the show is doing fine. Like I said a lot has changed since 2007 its not a comparison that works. And I think that people are having to go back four years to find positive spin on the current numbers is probably the best indication as to just how badly things are going for the show this year.

And just to confound the producers problems it should be noted that the 'big 3' acts that they pushed heavily going into the live shows and during them have now all been in the bottom two. I don't think they could have called this worse if they'd tried.

Minus +1. And I don't want to get bogged down in the +1 argument; I just think it should be counted because the 400,000 who watched it may have watched it live had +1 not existed.

Its not in life or death crisis as a show - but ITV will over its profit lines.
On the advertiser piece posted before - largely silly and made a lot of odd statements (one of them defended final ratings as a good thing against low overnights ignoring they don't include adverts!)

The shows costs will have been pulled back this year - and naturally due to new contracts being signed. At the same time ITV didn't expect the size of drop theres been.


Since its falling week on week its safe to say that a crisis is happening - where it levels out - it'll just be another disappointment for ITV.
This wouldn't be so bad if their other shows this year had succeeded but they've lost out big time from the likes of R/B and other formats - financially especially with R/B.

With no growth week on week but a fall instead - the show is going in the opposite direction to previous years. Its gonna hurt a lot of its not really rising towards the end.


X Factor will work out - but its a problem for its brand more than anything. And with The Voice looming - it could be in long term trouble.

One thing you can't ignore - something has gone REALLY wrong this year.

Sorry are you saying last nights show got a peek of 12.5m or are you saying you think the peek will be that tonight?

I know we never use +1 here unless we are looking at reach viewers rather than overnights. I know +1 is around 3% of live viewers - but I don't believe many of those viewers would have watched live without +1.

Or recorded it.
(This arguement is easily made by the fact Doctor Who's opening episode this year only had 4 million life, but 2 million more watched later by record - they'd have maybe used +1 instead)

The +1 arguement is only relevant for the soaps for me because they have other overnight figures that are not taken into account unlike ITV's.

Ah I meant tonight's peak, but the 2nd figure was the measured overnight for ITV1 (inc HD)

Even if you think I'm wrong, then there is no need for sarcasm and rudeness. But thank you for your viewpoint.

My point is this: the series has increased in ratings every single year. No-one but no-one could seriously expect that to continue forever. Every year there have been predictions that the show will drop. This year it finally has, but so far only back down to 2009 levels. That's not 'going back four years to find a positive spin', it's saying that the 2010 figures will likely be the peak for the show. It may drop further, but it's not anything like being a crisis just yet.

Fair enough?