This sounds really stupid...but surely not every single applicant is seen by the judges?

Is there some kind of vetting process beforehand?

Not that I know of - thats the whole point of the early shows isnt it

I think there must be some kind of vetting procedure with the production team. The maths don't add up otherwise. They probably whittle the numbers down by around 90% and send through those they think can either sing, or are so bad/weird looking they'll make good TV.

If 10,000 people showed up in 1 city, each will have to be processed with their application details (which are forwarded to the judges on the printed sheets they refer to), and given a stickly label to wear. There must also be security issues, checking for weapons. A recent entrant was not allowed to wear his mobile phone to his audition.

If all it entailed was just the 5-minute review in front of the judges it would take 833 hours to get through 10,000 people. That's 34 days non-stop, 24 hours a day.

They go through several stages before making it in front of the judges, same as on x factor over here.

Intrestinly Jordin Sparks who won season 6, was originally rejected at an early producer round in her season but went to a diferent city auditioned again, obviously made it through and went on to win. I think a similar thing has happened to a few former top 12 contestants.

The bits filmed inside the huge venues with thousands are filmed at the first audition, when they go in front of the producers in groups of four, they're just spliced into the judges part of the filming.

Clay Aiken (s2 runner up) had to audition again.

If the judges auditioned every applicant themselves, they’d probably still be judging season 3 by now.

You reckon 10% of the applicants get through to the TV audition stage?

I reckon it’s far less than this. Probably less than 1%.

At a guess, there are maybe 100,000 people apply each year. And there’s no way the judges are going to audition more than 100 people a day, for maybe 6 days.

that’s 0.6% of applicants at the most.

I just read Sanjaya's new book, which has some interesting stuff about non-disclosure agreements and whatnot. He said that on his season there were three rounds of producers to go through, the last being Ken and Nigel. Only after that do you get in to see the judges.

He described there being a best group and a worst group, and the best of the best and the worst of the worst go through. He also believed that they have a quota of different types of singers to fill.

well what a load of shite

In the UK, I think there is a paper application stage to go through first?

Then on the first day of auditions, where you see the thousands, there are 2 producer auditions. Then there are callbacks, auditions for Executive Producers and then the judges.

With 182,000 applicants to X Factor this year, if each took 3 minutes to audition and the judges worked 9am-6pm with a one hour break for 5 days a week, it would have taken 227 weeks to complete the auditions. So if they started for XF5 in May 2008, they could finish in September 2012 and the show would have to become a five yearly event. (About 4 years and 4 months.)

So a selection is taken to represent the auditions process on TV:
The very good
The decent singers with a good story
The very bad

C14E,

Some nice calculations there!

I wonder what the figures are for American Idol applications. That would be an interesting calculation. Based on your calculations for The X Factor, I’m guessing it would take Simon, Paula and Randy about 25 years to judge every applicant for one season of American Idol.

Their entire career just for one season!


You missed out:
Average singers with exceptional looks or personality