3:12pm Friday 27th August 2010
IS it me? Have we really got to the point that The X Factor is the peak of TV programming?
Yes, the 21st century equivalent of the Victorian freak show returned to our screens on Saturday complete with its usual array of the hopeless and seriously deluded.
There is an argument that viewers get the programmes they deserve. If we stopped watching Simon Cowell and co in our millions, the shows wouldn’t be given airtime.
Yet we lap it up. And because of that we’ve now got weeks of the banal and the baffling to wade through before the ‘competition’ itself starts.
So thanks for that everyone. I’m thrilled.
We can now tune in and watch no-hopers embarking on ‘journeys’ and ‘following their dreams’.
We can listen Louis Walsh telling the same no- hopers they ‘owned that song’ and we can see Dermot O’Weary pretending to be interested.
The main problem I have with X Factor is that it is so contrived. If you haven’t read Ben Elton’s excellent novel Chart Throb you should do.
After that you’d never be able to take The X Factor anything like seriously again.
And if it wasn’t bad enough anyway, this series, the producers appear to have started to Autotune the contestants, turning half of them into Cher soundalikes.
Surely the point of a singing contest is to hear if people can sing. Me, I’ll be watching something else. In fact, anything else.
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