Last I heard the ratings for X Factor are 5 Million.

I genuinely find a nice X Factor watchable. Its high ratings were impressive but I didn't like all the bitterness. The X Factor now is lighter and better for it but several years of bad production decisions have hurt the show. You're right about it needing to change perception. It's so hard though.

I always find The X Factor at Halloween to be its best live show, and it was. I think its the strength of the theme and just pure fun that makes it great. Motown week was the same.

Its when the themes are weak (like last week - Diva) that pulls it down.

Well let's see. Six-chair Saturday got 7.08- yes, down on the previous auditions of 7.6/7.7 but all these shows drop after the auditions. Six-chair Sunday got 7.09- up from the 6.8 the previous Sunday had managed despite the longer runtime.

The judges' houses Saturday was 6.8 but I'm fairly sure the SCD clash was a bit longer than the previous week. The 6.4 that Sunday got wasn't such an enormous drop.

The first live Saturday got 6.2m, pretty steady given the SCD clash. The drop from that to 5.8 was bad but hardly "off a cliff", you did seem to exaggerate.
Sunday results have gotten 6.5-6.7, only a touch below what bootcamp/JH Sunday shows were getting. Again, not "falling off a cliff". Language matters.

Last I heard that represented the highest rating on ITV after Coronation Street... 7.01m and 7.34m for two weeks ago in the officials.

Jog on mate, if you're gonna be snarky with me I can be snarky back.

In overnights, they rise in consolidated and have cleared 7m. That has put X Factor behind Coronation Street.. The start of the series had X Factor as the number 1 programme on ITV.

Why the absolute f*** are you picking a fight with me? Wake up and smell the coffee Dan, I'm kind of singing from a similar hymn sheet to you in supporting The X Factor here - I'm just suggesting ways the decline can be halted, or maybe even reversed.

That's called constructive criticism, and it's actually more valuable than blind defence.

Themes should be dropped apart from Halloween and maybe Christmas specials. I suppose Motown is quite a good theme but some of them are cack... Abba week for example - they doing that again this year?

They're too divisive IMO.

I'm just discussing your point, not really 'arguing'.
For the record I'm not really enjoying the live shows this year, they seem to have become my least favourite part of XF when in 2013 & 14 they were my favourite.


Yes, agree. Halloween, then Christmas for the semi and maybe Big Band which was spectacularly produced in 2014 (last time they had it).

SCD seems to be getting plenty of criticism tonight with the choice of music and overscoring of the judges. But due to the feel-ggod nature of SCD atm, its not likely to affect ratings.

Dan R why not accept the construtive critcisism. If TXF doesn't change, then ratings will keep dropping. Its madness to just stick your head in the sand. This will make TXF better by doing 'XYZ' then ratings will rise. Why not join in with the, 'they should do this next time to make TXF better', instead of blindingly defending the show?

Now I'd have said ...

The ratings held up the week after for JH so that seems like an exaggeration - how do you know it's not just people tuning out of live shows like cylon says??



You make the same point but in a more constructive and less slashy way.
Again, just my opinion and feel free to ignore me. You wouldn't be the first on here!

Well tbf I haven't disputed much of the criticism tonight, just pointing out the baiting way of phrasing one particular point.


Nah, advice is important. Thanks for all of it!

Agree with that. It is a lot nicer than it was a few years ago (six chair aside, although even that didn't feel quite as bad this year). It feels like they can never quite get a series right. Last year was just a disaster but they've got a lot right this year but just let themselves down in a few ways. It was the same in 2014 (the Mel B year), a good series overall but the numbers could have been higher if they hadn't ballsed a few bits of it up.


I'd agree with that as well. I'd have just a few themes and scatter them through the series. Halloween works really well and the Motown week was good this year too. Divas however just felt pointless.

No Abba week this year thankfully (it's not on the wheel anyway). The remaining themes on the wheel are Disco, 80s, Boyband vs Girlband, Movies and 'Louis Loves'. The last time they did Disco was in 2013 and it was probably the best live show of that series, they went for it and put a lot of effort in and had Nile Rodgers & Chic open the show. Although I think they did it a couple of times in the early years and it was a bit of a car crash. It's potentially a fun theme though. Same goes for 80s which if they go for it could work well, although when they did it in 2014 they picked boring songs. Song choice is key but again it could work. Don't see the point in Boyband vs Girlband. They've never done it before (I think it was planned in 2014 and then scrapped) but I don't see what it would add to the show, whilst Movies just feels a bit overdone, I swear they've done it every year. The idea of Louis Loves is amusing, but the reality...I think they'll use it in a later week when they do 2 songs each, with only 1 of them from that theme.

Viewers watching last week wouldn't have known beforehand about Strictly marking and song choices not working this week. But because Strictly has built up a lot of goodwill, the regular viewers will let it off when it has a bad show. Even with strange song choices the programme is still done in good spirits.

Or maybe it was a case of "Now that I've had a few hour-long showers and I finally feel clean again, I'm ready to try and forget that protracted, scripted nightmare (with the chairs and the baying crowd howling like wolves while people cry whilst walking on and off a stage). I'll give the judges houses a go because, pretty locations and it's classic X Factor. Oh, wait, they've sent home half the acts who had been given all the airtime at auditions and bootcamp, real heroes journeys and who I may have been rooting for or at least interested in continuing to watch... in favour of wildcards who didn't even get a seat the week before, acts who barely featured in previous stages and the chicken boys who actually just can't sing and were probably recruited/fast tracked by producers from the previous reality experience. On that basis I think I'll give the live shows a miss, or catch them if I'm really bored or at a loose end. Shame, the show started so well this year."

The show was "high vibe" until six chair challenge. Then it became low vibe, pond life scum again. Then judges houses wrote a whole new script, discarding acts like Christian Burrows whose audition got 5m YouTube views and 13 MILLION views / 240k likes on Facebook (about 50-100x more than even high performing videos on their page).

That was what they messed up with.

I would have won £50K! I think we all would have.

It's as though they can't quite resist the controversy. They're nearly there at keeping it light and frothy but they have to throw something in their to 'spice things up'


I think I'd throw Louis Loves out during Children in Need week when Strictly is in Blackpool. People would be intrigued with what the heck it is and the madness might allow the show to be slightly different after production throws everything at the BBC One show.

Saying that...


To me Strictly's been poor for the last two weeks. Last week I dismissed it as Halloween being a distraction (The X Factor was pretty poor too last Saturday) but no excuses this week... yet it was still a struggle to sit through. If they can they need to give every couple a suitable dance next week and try and get some of the feelgood factor back; whilst the storylines developing are intriguing the performance shows are becoming increasingly flat.

True.I found old threads back in 2012 on here calling for it to be axed,saying it was "dated" and "tired" and how terrible the ratings were.This was the year of James Arthur and Ella and comfortably averaged 8/9m for the live shows I imagine?

I'd get rid of the crowd which may happen next year since they've done that for the auditions.
The JH were filmed after the auditions were shown. Now you can do them earlier so that you then edit the auditions to suit it and that way you don't put through people that are trending well. I just googled Christian Burrows and remember the audition but that elimination didn't bother me as much as others. But then live eliminations annoy me coz not everyone agrees me for some odd reason.

As for themes - i prefer themes but they need to be precise. Tonight is (I'm still watching and just reached 4 of Diamonds). Motown and 80s make sense. Movies isn't a real theme as it can be anything like love songs or boybands.

I'd love to see a Country week just to see Simon implode and it'd be genuinely interesting.

I've always said you're the most intelligent poster on here.

See I'm the other way round - I think themes need to give as much scope as possible so acts can perform to their strengths and put on a good show; Best of British, Number Ones, Born in the USA, the 2000s etc. Rather than be hamstrung by limiting themes which benefit some and hurt others.

SCD has had a dodgy series. Talk of racist voting and people not having to compete to go through to the next week. I remember the controversy and outrage when people progressed on XF when they could not sing due to illness. Nasty comments allegedly getting a contestant to quit - but Len not Simon.

These are classic XF criticisms and largely OTT to be fair to Strictly.

XF has always been the show people hated because of Cowell and the fact that it is 'a disgrace to the music industry and these people haven't paid their dues and it's crap music and they destroy people's dreams and it's cruel....'

Strictly is celebrities dancing. It doesn't leave any legacy or footprint from one year to the next. Well except the Strictly curse. It's just an easy watch with no adverts with largely gold dancing thanks to some TV fakery.

Gimme SCD over GBBO any day.

I've been a member of this forum since 2005 and I have seen X Factor being criticised for years, even when it was very popular. Anybody that says it's only recently is new, a liar, has a bad memory, has their head in the sand or has some combination of 2 or more of the things I've just mentioned.

Let's look at October 2009. That's OCTOBER. TWO THOUSAND AND NINE

I won't be surprised if The X Factor is up on last week given the shock 'bottom two'.

How? How can a shock bottom two boost the ratings? Unless they publicised it beforehand. "Tune in to X Factor tonight to see a shock bottom two". And I know they didn't cos I watched Family Fortunes beforehand. And they couldn't anyway cos the vote lines wouldn't have closed. Cos I've just been reading what the judges said this week and the way they dish out the praise like Smarties, anyone would have been a shock in the bottom two apart from the freaky-haired twins, who'll obviously get loads of votes from people who want to annoy Simon Cowell. So I can't see bystanders say "Ooh, that's a shock bottom two. I wasn't going to watch but I will now."

All the hype for the last 2 weeks has come from the musical guests not the competing acts and there was a lot less hype for this week's guests, even though that was Westlife's first TV performance for a year, so I'm going to stick my neck out and predict a small drop in ratings this week, if not in average figure then in peak.

The freaky haired twins would have got my vote then. I did catch the last ten minutes-the deadlock thing seemed a bit stage managed to me-isnt that Danyl guy supposed to be the favourite? You see the hype has reached a stage that even I am tuning in.

There is also an 'emergency' meeting being held about the show, they announced it on The Xtra Factor. The press are going to go into spasms over that.

Otherwise known as Simon throwing his toys out of his pram. It's his own fault though - he's over hyped Danyl from the moment he met him at the auditions and tonight was just the culmination of the backlash.

You have got to hand it to the background staff in the last couple of years-to have elevated the brand to this level of hype is a mastery of manipulation. Also I wonder if a bandwaggon effect may start to roll for John and Edward even as a kind of backlash against the hype-given that the pair are supposedly the least talented at Karaoke.

Well, if Simon wants Danyl to win, he can abandon the money-spinning phone vote and the rest of the series and just announce him as the winner next Saturday. What's the point of the programme if you're going to tell the public how they have to vote? The GBP don't take kindly to that, anyway. That's why that Preger female won I'd Do Anything - because Cameron Mackintosh made it so obvious he wanted the other woman to be his Nancy. And look at the John Sergeant fiasco in last year's Strictly. As you say though, this is all contrived because Cowell and his team are experts in manipulating the cretins in the national press who are like salvinating wolves, desperate to pick up whatever crumbs they can of X Factor's huge success. (Scornful tone) An emergency meeting. FFS!

Yeah we disagree. I don't see the point of those themes because you can sing anything and don't even have a look like tonight's did. Tonight was really jusr a look as Creep showed you could sing almost anything.

I agree with those who said tonight was a damn good show. Very light and fun with some good singing and dancing and choreography.

Star of the show was Brian Friedman.

SCD had a very dodgy series in 2009 because it was crap. They've had dodgy moments this series with Will Young pulling out, injuries to contestants and a sick dancer. The people being whipped into a frenzy about racist voting have said a things then newspapers put their tweets in a story, or it's an opinion piece on it. Sometimes people don't have the fanbase to progress. Lesley Joseph went last week and I'm surprised we didn't get a paper saying Strictly was ageist too....which they did actually when they got rid of Arlene (it was Jay Hunt friend of older women presenters!). Strictly never goes out of the way to make controversy, X Factor didn't always either but would revel in it, use it in recaps and get stories in the papers to boost publicity. Saying that the decisions to have joke acts at the expense of better talented ones is done for a specific reason, headlines over talent.