Once upon a time, ten million of us would settle down in front of the telly on a Saturday night, often surrounded by friends and family, all with a take away perched on our knees, just to watch *The X Factor. *We were genuinely excited to see (and laugh at) whoever rocked up to the room auditions. The number of buttons still intact on Simon Cowell's shirt was a frequent source of lol material and you could definitely make a drinking game out of the number of times Louis Walsh said the word ‘likeability’.
But apparently that’s not really the case anymore. At least, not to the extent is used to be. In case you missed it (which, you probably did) the 14th series of The X Factor launched on Saturday night with the lowest ratings since the first ever season in 2004. Sure, in comparison to all of the other rubbish on TV over the weekend, the show still did pretty well ratings wise having hit an average of six million viewers, but there definitely seems to be a lack of conversation about the show that we were once really keen to stay on top of.
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There are, of course, the practical things like the fact that more often than not, we’ll watch something online via a catch-up as opposed to actual live broadcasts. A lot of that is down to a generational gap in TV habits – earlier this year Ofcom found that while the over 65s are still loyal to traditional telly boxes, the amount of TV watched by young people between 16 and 24 years old has dropped by 33% since 2010. No surprises there, just look at our Netflix habits.
But then there’s also the matter of reality TV being in a very different state to what it was back in the glory days of the early noughties. Back then we probably wouldn’t struggle as hard to name who was in the Big Brother house. American Idol was still a Thing. We’d just realised the awful brilliance of America’s Next Top Model. Queer Eye For The Straight Guy was apparently a thing that was allowed to be commissioned.
Now, thank god, we expect more from the shows that claim to be ‘real’. The faux character development in sweetly packaged VT’s isn’t enough to get passed audiences who are now used to shows like Love Island which is probably as close to an unfiltered display of personalities that we can get on TV at the moment. Our newfound scepticism and reluctance to buy into sob stories which are no long emotionally provocative but just another generic mechanism of televised talent competitions means we tend to see straight through every contestant who comes on, guitar in hand, to sing ‘their version’ of yet another Ed Sheeran song while their family tell Dermot O'Leary that this has been their absolute dream ever since they were little.
Perhaps it’s unfair because of course, all of these people are just trying to find their big break which, as evidenced by the likes of One Direction and Little Mix, can be found on The X Factor. But the reality is that we’re watching a show based on people chasing a dream that we know many others before them have found through YouTube, or just good old fashioned independent promotion. It seems authenticity now outweighs a fourth 'yes' from Simon Cowell.
On the other side of the coin is that X Factor still holds some sort of power. It’s not like we’ve completely turned off from it and I don't doubt that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. But even they have acknowledged that the same tired old format doesn't and can't work more than ten years after its inception (did you notice that they dropped the Xtra Factor?Yeah. That doesn't exist anymore).
Who knows, the ratings will probably rise and fall over the next few months. There will undoubtedly be a 'wild card' contestant who isn't actually any good at singing who makes it to the live shows just to give everyone something other than the shows' predictability to talk about. And if the new One Direction is born, we'll probably all sit up and pay attention once again. But for the time being, you won't find us on the sofa on a Saturday night, willing Sharon Osborne to throw her glass of water over Louis in a fit of flamboyant rage. We'll probably be in bed, huddled with a duvet and laptop, binge watching Netflix's latest offerings on our own time.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.