Khloe Kardashian In The X Factor
Khloe Kardashian appears to have had her time as the host of The X Factor in America come to an end, with reports coming out that only her co-host Mario Lopez has been asked back for the next series of the reality show.
With Britney Spears also having quit the show in order to avoid the pain of not being asked back on the show again and LA Reid leaving to concentrate on his day job it seems as if once again, The X Factor is trying to shake things up once again in order to grab a hold on the ladder.
With the second series of the talent contest actually getting lower rating than the opening series o the show despite both the high profile captures, it seems as if America simply isn’t willing to accept the X Factor in the same way that it has been in Britain. While there are plenty of reasons why, we’ll do our best to show the big three reasons why it will just continue to fail in America.
The Competition Is Too Strong
The one reason why The X Factor is still so popular in Britain is that it’s the only singing competition to run every year. While Britain’s Got Talent might have a singing element, but that’s a completely different animal.
When The X Factor came along, it replaced Pop Idol, not go into competition with it. This is the mistake Cowell made in America.
Cowell made a rod for his own back years ago when he took Pop Idol over to America and created the goliath that is American Idol. Becoming arguably the biggest talent show on Earth, the show garnered massive ratings and made superstars of both its contestants and its hosts.
If X Factor was the second show though, it would still stand a real chance, but it’s not, it’s the third. The Voice came a couple of years before and has already cemented itself as the alternative singing contest on American TV, leaving The X Factor left without a target market left to fill.
No Unique Hook
If you’re going to go up against the biggest players out there, you need to offer something new and unique. The Voice has its unique ‘only listening’ auditions and its clear teams. The X Factor however is bereft of gimmicks.
X Factor though came up with no original hook and simply preyed on the love that people had for the original American Idol line-up and format. The different age groups isn’t given enough importance to really matter in He massively overestimated the cache of his own name and relied on that alone to pull the show through.
The Wrong Personnel
While casting Khloe Kardashian into the spotlight might have been a good little bit of PR for the first 5 minutes, you then had to live with that decision for the rest of the series. Which, to put it mildly, was almost excruciatingly long. Khloe may be many things, but a good host isn’t one of them, with her never really showing off the natural ease that make Ryan Seacrest so watchable on American Idol and her co-host Mario Lopez an excellent choice.
It’s not just the hosting duties though, as Cowell needs to get the balance right on the judging table too. Britney Spears might have been a massive name, but she added very little to the show. American Idol’s judges aren’t much better, but they don’t need to be, they’re the leader.
The Voice has much better judges though, with the team of Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton and Christina Aguilera eons ahead. That they’ve been able to bring in replacements of the quality of Usher and Shakira speaks as to exactly what the focus of the show is.
The right judges can make or break a show like this, with the UK version of The Voice often described as dull for exactly this reason.
What do you think? Will X Factor ever succeed in America, or will it be just another failure? Let us know in the comments.