Like sheep the British masses will follow anything that is hyped enough.

I agree with the general gist of your point,that some people have been pretty successful to this point because of the show and that it's helped others in other ways, but statistics such as number of record contracts and #1 albums and singles etc can be misleading in some cases.

For example Cowell himself has said it takes his artists about 400k of sales for an album to break even in some cases, so Brookstein would have lost money for a company on that, ditto Maria etc, while Stripped while never #1 probably exceeded total album sales.

I would also be interested how many artists are making serious money a few years down the line, but as I said point taken in general.

Number ones are not just for christmas you know!!!!!!!

looked at most of the post and it looks like this has got to be the final x factor! turning into a bore with the familiar outcomes! should have been the public to vote out the acts i.e the lowest votes!

I agree totally with you on this, far too many times it's been a case of keeping their own acts in at the expense of someone far better.