X Factor

1.7m average according to the DS thread, compared to a peak of 8.6m for SPOTY.

X Factor lost it for me when they stopped having Andi Peters in the CD Factory printing off the winner's record.

Yeah, I think we can lay that one at Spotify's door rather than Syco's, to be fair.

X Factor got worse the more it was manipulated. They hit the sweet spot in 2010 completely by accident and have spent every year since frantically trying to cast the same characters. The few years after were still pretty successful (2012 was particularly good, especially the James Arthur v Ella Henderson sing-off, which is still one of my favourite moments from the show’s history) but once we got to the Honey Gs and Stevie Richies it was all just too contrived.

It just became a mess when Cowell returned. 2011-2013 held up relatively well both ratings wise and talent wise, and although there was a different panel every year there was consistency with only one judge changing in 2012 and 2013, and bringing both Nicole in and Sharon back being an improvement on the year before. In 2014 they should have just switched out Gary for Simon, but obviously Simon thought he knew best and it wasn't until 2016 the show got the panel it should have done when he bought back Louis, Sharon and Nicole for a couple of years. Perhaps if that panel had remained in place from 2014-2017 the show would have remained on a better footing.

Next year the show needs to own the fact it is the last series rather than pretend it isn't. I think if possible stick with Simon, Louis and Nicole rather than shake it up again - if they need a 4th I suspect Leona might be in the frame now - she'd be relatively cheap I'd have thought compared to bringing back another judge. Have no more than 12 finalists and just play it straight, though I'd be tempted to scrap the Six Chair Challenge and Judges Houses in favour of the judges putting through 10 candidates in each category and the viewers voting three through to the live finals.

Ouch, that's bad, really, really bad

Matt Cardle had 17.7m....

Can't be many shows that lose 90% of their audience and still get another series.

Brexit keeps getting renewed, I guess

If only it had lost 90% of its audience.

I wonder what dirt Cowell has on ITV.

The only reason I can see that it keeps getting renewed is that ITV wants to keep Simon Cowell happy for as long as BGT still pulls in the ratings. My guess is the two shows probably come as a package.

If ITV told him they didn't want X Factor any more, he could maybe threaten to take both to Channel 5 or Sky.