The X Factor (British TV series)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The X Factor first hit British television screens on the 4th of September 2004, and almost immediately began reshaping Saturday nights in the United Kingdom. Created by Simon Cowell, the show offered contestants of all ages and backgrounds a single audition for a recording contract with Syco Music - a prize worth a million pounds, though the majority of that sum was earmarked for marketing and recording costs rather than the winner's pocket.

  Over fifteen series and around 445 episodes, the programme introduced the country to Leona Lewis, One Direction, Little Mix, and James Arthur - acts who would go on to claim number-one singles in the UK charts. At its peak in 2010, the seventh series drew average audiences of over 14 million viewers. By the final series in 2018, that figure had fallen below six million.

  How did a programme born from Simon Cowell's frustration with a rival show become the defining entertainment format of its era, and what finally brought it down?

• 2. Born from Pop Idol

  ›

  Simon Cowell did not arrive at The X Factor in a vacuum. His earlier work as a judge on Pop Idol - the ITV talent competition that ran from 2001 to 2003 - planted the seed of discontent that produced the new show. Cowell felt that he and his fellow judges had too little control over which contestants progressed. His dissatisfaction was shared by fellow Pop Idol judge Pete Waterman, who agreed that Michelle McManus, winner of the second series, had not deserved to beat the other participants.

  The frustration led Cowell to a specific ambition: ownership of the television rights to any new competition he devised, giving him direct authority over the format. ITV secured those rights in 2004 after Cowell brought his concept to the broadcaster, though the path was not entirely smooth. Simon Fuller, the creator of Pop Idol, mounted a legal challenge over perceived similarities between the two programmes.

  At the British Comedy Awards in 2005, The X Factor took the prize for Best Comedy Entertainment Programme, prompting Cowell to tell the audience, "We're not a comedy programme, we're a serious factual drama" - a line that captured both his defensiveness about the show's credibility and the audience's complicated relationship with the spectacle it provided.

• 3. How the Machine Worked

  ›

  Before any contestant ever stood in front of a camera, they had already passed through two unfilmed rounds of auditions conducted before production staff and senior production members. The X Factor imposed no upper age limit and no restriction on groups; applications came by post or online. Only at the third stage did the judges enter the picture.

  Bootcamp followed for those who survived. Contestants were sorted into three categories: solo men and women under 24, solo acts aged 25 and older, and groups of two or more. The minimum age for the main categories was 16, though for the fourth through sixth series it was lowered to 14. Judges were assigned one category each to mentor, whittling their group down to roughly six acts before sending them on to the judges' houses stage.

  According to Louis Walsh, the private residences used for judges' houses were typically not the judges' own homes but rented properties. That detail - offered casually in interviews - hints at the degree of theatrical construction behind a show that presented itself as raw and spontaneous. From the tenth series onward, bootcamp was replaced by a format called the Six-Chair Challenge, in which participants competed for one of six seats in each category; if all chairs were filled, the category's judge had to remove someone to make room for a preferred act. Viewers were not won over by the change.

• 4. A Revolving Panel

  ›

  Kate Thornton presented the first three series before Dermot O'Leary was brought in on a two-year contract reportedly worth one million pounds, an arrangement that led him to step back from his involvement in the Big Brother franchise. The judging panel changed even more frequently than the presenting roster.

  For the first three series, Cowell sat alongside Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh. In June 2007, a fourth judge was added: Brian Friedman initially replaced Walsh, while Australian singer Dannii Minogue joined as the fourth member. Friedman departed during auditions for the fourth series and was reassigned as a creative director, at which point Walsh returned. During the seventh series, Minogue took maternity leave and was replaced during auditions by a rotation of guest judges including Geri Halliwell, Natalie Imbruglia, Katy Perry, Pixie Lott and Nicole Scherzinger.

  The churn accelerated through the later series. Cowell and Cheryl both left before the eighth series to focus on the American version of the show. Gary Barlow, Tulisa, and Kelly Rowland were brought in as replacements. Rowland could not attend live episodes of the eighth series for medical reasons; previous X Factor winner Alexandra Burke stood in. The fifteenth and final series in 2018 saw Cowell joined by Robbie Williams, Ayda Field, and Louis Tomlinson - a panel that reflected both the show's declining commercial weight and its turn toward nostalgia.

• 5. Stars Made and Unmade

  ›

  The live rounds produced a complicated record. Winners received a recording contract and a cash advance of 150,000 pounds from the fifth series onward, with the balance of the million-pound deal covering production and marketing costs. Not every winner converted the contract into a lasting career, but the runners-up and early eliminees sometimes fared better than the victors.

  JLS, One Direction, Olly Murs, and Ella Henderson all appeared on the show without winning, yet all placed singles at number one in the UK charts. One Direction, who were assembled during bootcamp from five solo auditionees deemed not strong enough to advance individually, went on to a global career. Little Mix became the first group to win the competition, taking the eighth series title in 2011.

  The programme eventually accumulated 35 number-one singles in total: ten winners' singles, four charity singles, and 21 further number-ones by contestants who had appeared on the show. Leona Lewis, winner of the third series, represented a turning point in how winners were handled. Cowell, who became her manager after the show, chose not to rush her debut album into production, saying: "We could have gone into the studio for a month, made the record quick, and thrown it out. It would have been the wrong thing to do." Her debut album Spirit proved successful enough that future winners were given more time to record original material, rather than albums composed largely of cover versions.

• 6. The Christmas Number One Wars

  ›

  By the sixth series in 2009, the X Factor winner claiming the Christmas number one single had become so predictable that bookmaker William Hill was reportedly considering dropping the 30-year tradition of taking bets on the outcome. The formula seemed unbreakable.

  Then a Facebook campaign organised around Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name" succeeded in pushing that track to the Christmas number one that year, displacing the winner's single from Joe McElderry. McElderry's single did climb to the top of the chart the following week, but the cultural damage was done. The campaign expressed a widely held unease with the show's grip on British music retail at the most commercially significant moment of the year.

  The charity single strand ran alongside the winner's single from the fifth series. That year's finalists covered Mariah Carey's "Hero" in aid of Help for Heroes, reaching number one. Cowell announced the charity single would become an annual tradition, though it was discontinued after the eighth series. The 2011 charity single, a cover of Rose Royce's "Wishing on a Star", featured previous contestants JLS and One Direction together - a moment that illustrated how thoroughly the show had remade the British pop landscape in just seven years.

• 7. Decline and Cancellation

  ›

  The seventh series in 2010 marked the high point. Average viewers exceeded 14 million, and the live final peaked at 19.4 million. From the eighth series onward, the numbers fell consistently. By 2011, Strictly Come Dancing had overtaken The X Factor in the ratings battle, including for live finals - a reversal that would have seemed implausible three years earlier.

  The tenth series averaged 8.5 million viewers, well behind Strictly, and later series lost ground not only to that rival but to programmes such as Michael McIntyre's Big Show and Planet Earth II. The fifteenth series in 2018 averaged 5.75 million viewers, a decline of more than 50 percent from the peak eight years before.

  Cowell placed the programme on hiatus after 2018, commissioning two limited-run spin-offs for 2019: The X Factor: Celebrity, won by Megan McKenna, and The X Factor: The Band, won by Real Like You, a six-member girl group. On the 28th of July 2021, ITV announced there were no current plans for another series, effectively ending the programme. Industry observers noted that the format had gone "slightly stale" in its final years, no longer drawing the Saturday night audiences that had once made it unmissable.