What gives talent shows the x factor?

Millions of people will be glued to tomorrow's 'X Factor' final, to see which of the 200,000 who auditioned will become a star, writes ROSITA BOLAND. Reality shows, it seems, continue to grow like charmed beanstalks

TOMORROW EVENING, some time shortly before 9.30pm, either Olly Murs, Stacey Solomon or Joe McElderry will discover that they have been voted the winner of The X Factor2009. There will be tears all round. Simon Cowell might say something nice and actually mean it. Louis Walsh will blink and smile more than usual. Dannii Minogue is likely to continue the season's trend of having her hair styled into a different type of hat for each show. Cheryl Cole's frock is certain to be memorable. Millions will watch, including Ireland's most famous twins, who started the competition as John and Edward Grimes, and exited as the shock-headed phenomenon Jedward.

And millions of pounds will be made – a reported €22 million in advertising revenue for the final alone, and almost €8 million for Cowell across the entire series.

Then, on Monday, Irish viewers will tune into the final of TV3's version of the job-hunting reality-show franchise, The Apprentice, to see whether Steve Rayner or Stephen Higgins will be Bill Cullen's new employee on a salary of €100,000. The show's most discussed contestant was the bumbling, likeable Breffny Morgan who displayed an impressive mastery for waffle, and was affectionately nicknamed "the Breff-Meister". The quote of the season came from Geraldine O'Callaghan, fired this week, who dismissed the chances of two of her university-educated fellow contestants by declaring: "Daddy can't buy you cop-on in Trinity College". But of more long-term importance is how The Apprenticeis making TV3 a true rival to RTÉ.

Elsewhere, Strictly Come Dancing, a show in which a celebrity is paired with a professional dancer, and which is hugely popular in Britain, concludes later this week. Last week, a chef called Gino D'Acampo won I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, now in its eighth season. Big Brothermay be entering its final year on Channel 4, but the reality shows grow like charmed beanstalks through every schedule.

There are shows searching for chefs ( Hell's Kitchen, Masterchef); restaurateurs (Raymond Blanc's The Restaurant); entrepreneurs (Dragon's Den); fashion designers ( Project Runway); and models (Make Me A Model, America's Next Top Model). All of these attract large, enthusiastic, loyal audiences. But by far the most popular with audiences, and the most lucrative for production companies, are the shows such as X Factorand Britain's Got Talentthat search for singers and performers. Nothing else generates even a fraction of associated coverage.

WHEN CONTESTANT Number 4,321 walked out on stage in April to audition in Britain's Got Talent, few could have guessed that she would walk off the stage a few minutes later as a global celebrity. Susan Boyle's extraordinary audition, singing I Dreamed A Dream, was swiftly uploaded to YouTube, and within nine days it had been viewed 100 million times.

Through the internet, she had become a global star of a local talent show, watched around the world within hours. She didn’t win the series, but such was the international media interest in her that winning became irrelevant. That initial publicity brought her into the US mainstream immediately, far quicker than was possible through traditional marketing campaigns. This week, her debut album is Number One in the US charts for the second week in a row, and it also has the top-selling slot in Britain.

Boyle became famous in a way she never could have done if she had appeared on Opportunity Knocksdecades earlier. Opportunity Knocks, which aired at three different times between 1956 and 1990, was Britain's best-known talent show of its time. Winners were initially selected by postal vote, which had to arrive the day before transmission. What has changed since then is both the platform available to contestants, and the methods of voting.

Even in the 1980s – certainly in Ireland – it was not standard for homes to have a landline and the phone was for functional purposes only, those functions not including voting on talent shows. But during the final run of Opportunity Knocks, from 1987 to 1990, the programme pioneered the now-standard format of deciding a winner via telephone vote.

Less than two decades later, all Cowell's shows are built around a business model of generating money from text and phone votes. This year, X Factorresults moved to a second show, on Sunday, which means the money-generating voting lines are now open for 24 hours.

If the show is interactive, the audience has the opportunity to reward – or punish someone – for the price of a call. Katie Price, aka Jordan, returned to I'm A Celebritythis year (a show she had won in 2004), to try and win back public affection after her recent marriage breakdown travails. It backfired. She walked out of the show when the public voted seven times in a row for her to do the infamous "bush tucker trials". Whether they win or lose X Factortomorrow night, the finalists will at least be spared the indignity of being asked to eat kangaroo testicles on live television.

These shows also thrive on new and old media. Increasing numbers watch while simultaneously commenting on social networking website Twitter, so every Saturday and Sunday evening, X Factoris high on the list of topics being tweeted about. Newspapers now routinely give acres of coverage to reality shows and celebrities: some depend heavily on them, often "adopting" a show for its entire run.

It is a similar case with the celebrity and entertainment magazines. The shows feed material carefully to each, often based on a contestant’s back story. It’s a collective experience; a symbiotic food chain between the entertainment industry, the media and the public. And the appetite for it is huge.

Ben Frow is head of programming at TV3, which, as well as making The Apprenticealso imports X Factorand I'm A Celebrity. "People keep saying it's going to die, but there's a real hunger for reality television," he says. The figures prove it. TV3 viewers for The Apprenticehave doubled on last year, up to 600,000. A fortnight ago, the station recorded a viewership of 800,000 for the Sunday X Factorshow, its highest-ever ratings.

Why does Frow think so many people are tuning in? “People can get involved, and have a say in what happens and who wins,” he says. Reality talent shows attract advertisers because, as Frow puts it, “they’re a young audience. They’re not old and they’re not poor. They’re a nice audience.”

IF THERE IS SOMEONE IN television today who understands audiences, it is Simon Cowell. He is the most successful, canny, and influential person in the world of reality television – perhaps in any genre of television. His company, Syco, makes X Factor, America's Got Talentand Britain's Got Talent. Cowell unerringly seems to know what audiences want – and what they overwhelmingly prove they want is to see people achieve a dream, usually the same dream they have themselves, of fame, wealth, and a prestige job.

It’s striking that on reality shows, whether the prize is a modelling contract, a job as a chef, or a recording deal, the most consistent statement from contestants is: “This is my dream.” You may not be able to attain your fantasies, but as a voting viewer, you can participate in deciding weekly who you want to “live the dream”, as the reality show mantra goes.

Reality TV in numbers

200,000

Number who auditioned for this year's X Factor

1 million

Copies of first single sold by 2008 X Factor winner Alexandra Burke

438

Simon Cowell's place on the Sunday Times rich list

€130 million

Cowell's estimated fortune

600,000

Viewing figures for The Apprentice on TV3

650,000

Ratings for opening show of RTÉ1's All-Ireland Talent Show

800,000

TV3's peak rating for X Factor this series – its highest ever ratings

1

TV3's ranking among 15- to 24-year-olds

2 million

Estimated number of votes that will be cast by viewers of the X Factor final

0

Number of X Factor votes cast from the Republic of Ireland. It's restricted due to early voting scandals

Generation Games: The Ancestry of Reality TV

IN 2007, defending then England football manager Steve McClaren, his former boss at Manchester United, Alex Ferguson knew who to blame: ice skating celebrities. "You see it on all these TV shows where the panellists criticise the contestants. There's a mocking industry now and it's even generated by television programmes. Even when they skate, the panel criticises them."

Ferguson was reflecting what many have argued: that such shows are fuelled by cruelty; that in their auditions they mock people who should be protected; or that, at the very least, it is crass, artless programming that is dumbing down television.

The genre has many defenders. The Irish Timescolumnist Sarah Carey wrote of the X Factor that "Simon Cowell is a smart man who might insult the sensibilities of cultural commentators, but never the intelligence of the viewers".

Talent shows have long been a fixture of the schedules. For much of the 1970s, Opportunity Knockswas a cornerstone of British TV, while Tops of the Townswas an ancestor of the All-Ireland Talent Show.

In 1979, RTÉ was showing an old movie on Saturday evening. The BBC had the Generation Gameand then Dallas; while ITV had a talent show, Search for a Star.

Twenty years ago this week, ITV broadcast Blind Dateand Beadle's About, while RTÉ1 had an episode of Mission Impossible, followed by a concert recorded at the Olympia. And then an episode of Dallas.

Today, the influence of the talent shows has spread to areas that would have seemed unlikely TV fodder. The Restaurantinvolves people competing to run a restaurant. More obviously, the BBC is running School of Saatchi, in which art students compete for patronage while the programme poses the question "what is art?". If you answered "Jedward" to this question, you know where you stand.

Shane Hegarty