This wouldn’t surprise me. Demi looked pissed both nights. It wasn’t the same bubbly Demi we saw before.

Interesting, if true, wkstrack. Still don’t know if what was televised were her plans or the reported last minute changes…whichever, it wasn’t a good set of concepts. Seems Brian Friedman is being painted as the Bad Guy here…although I always find it disingenuous when reporters say “The Producers” en mass – when Cowell is running the show. They work for him.

I think it was comparable to what you hear on various award shows.

I think that the problem with this is that with awards shows people are familiar with the songs and the artists, so it’s easier for the artists to get away with a performance that’s more about the visual, the dancers, etc than the actual vocal performance.   But, with a talent show, people want to have a chance to get to know the contestants, and that’s not going to happen, if the focus is on everything else but them, and they get lost on the stage among the dancers, crowd noise, and music.  

The contestants on the X Factor acted like they didn’t know how to respond to everything that was going on.  Quite a few of them looked uncomfortable, and like they’d really appreciate giving a performance, where it was just them, a microphone, and a simple backing track or instrumental.  

That being said … a lot of the people working on these shows are also American, like Brian Friedman and the FOX executives, so they should have a clue. But, they are also in television which doesn’t like to change a “winning formula.” So, basically, they took the UK X-Factor — which is successful there — and just tried to transpose it on the U.S.

It reminds me of “The Office.” Remember when it debuted in the U.S., they basically took the scripts of the first “series” — as they call it — and filmed them the same way in the U.S. It was NOT a great fit and the series only took off after that period, when they began to produce and write the show to fit an American audience and their sensibilities. But, of course, of all the artistic mediums, comedy is very culture specific — especially wordplay and higher level comedy as opposed to site gags.

Maybe there are elements of these talent/variety shows which are equally subject to specific likes and dislikes of the society it’s trying to appeal to.

I was just thinking that the American Idol version of Simon has a lot to do with why US viewers might have a problem with the X Factor’s production style. American Idol judge Simon would have told people like Jason, that they don’t belong on the show, and that they should be on broadway. He would have trashed the emphasis on performance style over vocal ability. 

I think this is part of the issue, but I think there is also a cultural difference. American Idol has evolved to be a show where a contestant can really show their vocal ability, musicianship, and originality. The British version, Pop Idol, didn’t evolve as much, and was cancelled when the X Factor came on.  This might be a cultural preference, because maybe a more low-key production is preferred by the American viewers of these type of shows, where the more OTT production is preferred by British audiences. The cultural difference might be why American Idol does better in the US, while X Factor is doing better in the UK.

I’ve actually been watching some of X Factor UK and have been in chats, and have found many viewers like the more OTT contestants, and they go much further in the competion than they ever would either on the US version, and definately not AI.  Also, a few years ago, there was a contestant that did his own arrangements, and the UK viewers said they hadn’t seen a contestant like that before.  I have also noticed that in the UK, many of the former contestants mainly release cover albums even after they are off the show, and they do very well, where they probably wouldn’t here  except for the Idol albums.

I also think US viewers have come to prefer where contestants can make their own song choice, and make their own arrangements.  And I know they don’t have total control, but they have much more of a choice than they seem to on X Factor, and that might be why some contestants seemed to do better on their auditions, when they can pick their own music.