I don’t know if there was a greater time to be alive as a millennial than the height of The X Factor.
Weekends were defined by Simon Cowell’s ITV juggernaut, watching the likes of Leona Lewis and One Direction plucked from obscurity to some of the biggest popstars on the planet.
Seven years since it rapidly declined from being the biggest television moment of this century to barely scraping more than four million viewers, it’s reportedly coming back to salvage ITV’s dreadful track record of finding new reality shows following a string of extremely expensive flops.
And now it’s rumoured to be coming back.
But as much as I’m desperate to relive the heyday years of rounding up friends every single Saturday and Sunday night to watch X Factor, those days are long gone and they’re never coming back.
When the show eventually died, it was a long overdue mercy killing.
Ratings had fallen off a cliff; and I’d bet you’ve never heard of the final two winners, Rak-Su and Dalton Harris.
A lucrative record deal won in front of millions isn’t enough to guarantee success. It wasn’t by the end of The X Factor and it certainly isn’t now.
If the show is going to return, it has to look so radically differently to how it was before that it can barely even be the same show. And without the promise of a life-changing career, there’s no incentive as a viewer to watch.
Last year Cowell launched The Next Act, following his hunt to find ‘the next One Direction’ on Netflix.
December 10 was the winning band (nope, me neither) but all the show proved was that the man responsible for shifting more than 600 million records has lost his Midas touch.
He was no longer on the pulse; the industry has changed but he no longer knew how to change with it.
There’s been no appetite for a manufactured new band or artist in a decade.
Cowell was the beating heart of The X Factor but, if anything, he should be kept well away from any potential return – and he’s not the only former judge who no one wants to see.
Sharon Osbourne is on a one-woman crusade to ruin the legacy of her family with her apparent backing of a Tommy Robinson demonstration, while Louis Walsh’s unfiltered cruelty has no place on television in 2026.
