It's been tired since Gary Borelow sucked the fun out of it in 2011.

He's gone now, all is well again.

Well that's a ridiculous thing to say. Not quite as ridiculous as The X Factor being the dark horse show of the Autumn but still...

Really disappointing. The show's only beaten X Factor in the overnights on, what is it, five out of five attempts?


Ask ITV. They've scheduled it that late in recent years.


Got it. Yeah, they cocked that up. Here was ronant's Tweet with the actual ratings:

Well that's good news young James that you are now stopping, you were getting just a bit boring.
The XF needs a few weeks to rid it self of the talentless performers. Just watched a bloke who genuinely cannot sing. The first group on also suffered from that problem.
If they both go tomorrow then things will start looking up for the show.

And did it work out?

If that's all it's got to do, it's done a good job. You weren't going to like all 16 acts were you!

Thanks for the compliment by the way, I get them a lot on here. Not.

Although when you consider the number of hours ITV get out of The X Factor (and the SyCo shows in general) this isn't the impossibly huge sum that people like to suggest. This week alone they're getting at least 5.5 hours of original content out of The X Factor (including Xtra Factor). Then add in how often the show is repeated across the week.

EDIT - Just saw the beginning of Through the Keyhole. Des O'Connor has just become full blown orange it would seem...

So glad X Factor's finally over tonight, maybe people can calm the heck down now. Please.


I take James Jordan's opinion even less seriously than I do certain people on here. There's a massive difference between Strictly and DWTS, it's not even close to how messy that show's become, and adding Donny Osmond for week doesn't make it any closer.

Well I enjoyed TXF tonight. I thought the standard was very good.

Hope it rates well, but it hasn't a chance really.

I understand what you're getting at but that amount of content (give or take a wee bit) is what they were already getting under the previous cheaper contract, surely for the increased price they'll be expecting more than the ratings to be flat or at most seeing tiny insignificant increases. Why not just keep paying the same price if you're getting the same product

No point bragging or slinging mud at each other either way about X Factor yet. We haven't had the figures yet. To be honest I'm not particularly confident about it especially after last Saturday's awful number. I think it'll probably be in the low-7s (inc +1) tonight. Not great but I can't see anything better happening with the 65 minute overlap.

I thought the show was very good tonight. I liked the panel a lot (especially Mel B) and the standard of acts overall is pretty strong. Obviously in a field of 16 there will be some weak ones as there were but I think there are some real standouts too.

I think their best hope is for the numbers to perk up a bit across the run as they certainly aren't going to start well tonight. In reality though perking up across the run will be very difficult for an 11 year old show so I think it could end up in some trouble sadly.

I've still got another hour to go... then I might go off on one.


I think with the increase in props and gimmicks plus the over-the-top scoring (not just from Donny) it is moving more towards Dancing with the Stars but I agree that it has some way to go to make the transformation complete.

You know what Samuel, your posts are Downright Shabby

Because SyCo asked for more money I'd assume. Probably hoping to offset some of the loses to their bottomline of the US version of the show being axed. I'm sure ITV would love large increases in the numbers (but they'd want that with or without the increase in license fee) but I also don't think they're going to struggle to make money from The X Factor this year and neither do they I suppose since they willingly handed over the money.

Just to reiterate, they have not spent £50m more on The X Factor. That isn't the case. For a start the previous contract was worth £120m. This contract is believed to be between £140m and £150m. This will include Cowell's appearance few unlike the previous contract (bear in mind Cowell's 2012 and 2013 BGT appearances will have been on top of that £120m as he wasn't originally planning to appear when the contract was signed). Furthermore, the contract is over 3 years and includes BGT, ITV2 spinoffs, online content etc. Overall the increase per hour of TV will be pretty minimal and it probably only comes in at what a typical hour of drama comes in at (and probably cheaper than BBC1 rival Doctor Who).

Ah right okay. I'd not remembered that it includes all the hours of Got Talent as well, that makes it make more sense. And of course it takes into account inflation etc. So it probably isn't that ridiculous a sum after all, as AlexiR was suggesting. Thanks for the insight.

N.B. Doctor Who costs around £1m per episode, can't be bothered to do the maths but I would guess that you're quite right in claiming DW works out more expensively. I could say you get a better result out of the bigger investment but that's just my opinion, of course

Are we any the wiser as to the reasons behind BBC One's schedule change this evening? On the face of it, it seemed bonkers.


No, not well at all. There's no guarantee that long clashes in place of late finishes will work any better though. That's the beauty of ratings.

Nope. Couldn't spot any dodgy extra scenes in Doctor Who that seemed thrown in at the last minute. Maybe they planned to start DW slightly earlier than billed to catch-out the usual 'switch off' mob, but then SCD's dress rehearsals ran slightly longer than originally expected, and they didn't want to cut any adverts inbetween DW and SCD.

EDIT: That made more sense in my head

Was the additional five minutes not needed, then?

Well one things for sure whatever happens with the ratings tommorrow there is going to be far too smugness from one side or the other because they cant all be right with their predictions. Samuel v James - I think I am bored already.

I was referring to swapping the lottery draws and Casualty, which would seem to have given X Factor an open goal at 21:25? (Casualty generally rating considerably better than the standalone lottery draws.)

EDIT: Ah, one aspect I hadn't noticed from ronant's post earlier:


http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...postcount=1101

No idea about the extra five minutes allotted to Who. Will have to scrutinise Overnights.tv tomorrow.

Deleted.

100% this. Everything has been done before.

Its still criminal to have the lottery show before Casualty though.

I thought the first half of X Factor was dull tonight, but it perked up in the second half with some strong talent. I do think we'll see an underwhelming rating tomorrow though - I'm thinking 7.2m with +1 included. The show was too long and bloated, and I imagine a lot of viewers will be catching up tomorrow.

The late change to the schedule might affect Casualty tonight which is a shame as it rated quite well last week, and we could have seen another strong rating this week with the character's funeral. If I was BBC One controller, I would give Casualty a major revamp though.

I would give it a major promotional campaign, overhaul the storylines and characters in time for the New Year. Casualty would do well in January and capitalise on weak ITV competition and the existence of The Voice on Saturday nights would create a good lead in and help attract casual viewers to Casualty again. I would use this as an opportunity to transform Casualty and make it a big ratings winner again.