Simon Cowell sends out the scouts in hope of finding 'real' talent
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Version 0 of 1. In news that may come as a crushing blow to anyone who has been wondering if Coronation Street might not actually be a fly-on-the-wall documentary after all, it has emerged this week that, with auditions already under way, The X Factor still has a "shopping list" of acts it wants for the live finals. According to a memo that somehow found its way into the Sun, some hopefuls may be less hopeful than others, and will "queue jump" the punters who turn up to queue and make X signs behind Dermot O'Leary. Just as Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch once noted that there were only seven stories in the world, so The X Factor has decreed that there are 13 different types of popstar. These include "young bad boys", "young sassy girls", "a 'man of the people'" and "a very camp group". At times, the list seems to employ the same mindset as organisers of the Reading and Leeds festival ("rockers – good or bad"), while other directives are less vague: they want Olly Murs, Stacey Solomon and Cher Lloyd. An X Factor spokesperson didn't deny the existence of this shopping list, only noting that "no one is fast-tracked or given preferential treatment. This year we have had tens of thousands of people enter the show." Times are tough in all areas of the media, and financial concerns have an impact on all programming. Where once a show such as The X Factor might have been permitted to exist solely as an act of extreme artistic endeavour, now there are bills to pay. In light of this, I would suggest there is one simple way to cut costs, and that is to stop paying the various talent scouts the show employs to find artists. If being scouted – being discovered and persuaded to appear on the show – really offers no advantage to an act and therefore has no impact on the artists that audiences will see in the live finals, then those scouts are being paid for no reason. Cut them all loose! If, on the other hand, The X Factor's scouted acts do get funnelled into a completely separate, considerably smaller set of auditions along with the acts being submitted by well-known management teams, and if (in common with at least one other talent show) they are told at the outset that they are guaranteed a place in the live finals, then by all means keep paying those scouts. Maybe go easy on the shots of those bright-eyed hopefuls humbly rocking up with little more than a dream and an acoustic guitar, though, eh? |