Like Strictly it's a TV show with singing very low down on the priority list.
I was with Simon Cowell when he invented the format and he loves entertainment and doesn't really care much about music. Just listen to his early releases - Sinitta, Teletubbies, Power Rangers...

The X Factor is entertainment and it's done a hell of a lot for music by providing high profile mass appeal exposure but let's not pretend it represents music in general; the executives involved in music have let the side down badly by failing to invent, encourage or promote sounds.

Just look at the approach to The Brits. A new statue; a new logo; visual gimmicks.

When I attempted to involve music in The Brits (The Great British Music Weekend in 1991's show) the executives howled in horror.

The entertainment element this series probably seems higher because the standard of contestant is so low. So non-musical elements are driving the juggernaut this year.
Cheryl Cole who appears to have;on the Show as judge and artist with her album advertised in a ad break. She has all the angles covered , it seems. There is a pretty tight circle here. Shayne Ward performs in last week's show with a really ordinary piece of pop pap .Would he be invited to perform if he were not a previous winner /Syco act? Certainly not.
The show far from losing steam and ratings as some hopefuls would have , shows signs of actually increasing popularity. The caustic and blatantly panto villainous behavour of the judges-Cowell's stricture about Cheryl "becoming lazy "with her acts as she sets about securing her career in LA, was highly amusing, as if Simon himself wouldn't dream of putting himself first.
This is , to use a topical phrase, car crash tv and it will get worse before the end. There will more vote rigging "scandals" , most likely around Mary "Tesco" Byrne, Wagner and increasingly unstable Katie Waissel.

Who remembers the "grebo" band from the Midlands called Pop Will Eat Itself? Well it has now hasn't it? The music business has devoured itself, and there is nothing left of any substance but the past.
Many of Cowell's X-Factor acts have more in common with Val Doonican than they do the exciting pop music of the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s, apart from those with a supposed "R'n'B edge" (R'n'B/Hip Hop - the last living vestige of an inventive popular genre in the late 90s - has had its veins cut open and the blood drained into generic 21st Pop leaving everything a computer-generated lifeless soulless heavily vocodered shell).The Brits can be as gimmicky as it likes - there is nothing left to celebrate!

Here is a fresh new pop act from almost 30 years ago... playing their self-written debut single live on daytime tv plus an interview...

Question: If this lot were new out today what would happen? (Cast aside the fact that the band imploded a year later due to almost BCR-esque mismanagement) Daytime tv & Radio 1? How would they fair on X-F or BGT? I think it would be 6music & word of mouth IF THEY WERE LUCKY... Certainly not top ten hits, critical appraisal & "teen sensations" ("teen" bands just pretend and/or sit on stools don't they?)