Is The X Factor Rigged and a Fix?

Fix Factor time again? Sundays X Factor saw Carolynne Poole voted off in favour of Rylan Clark leaving viewers asking is the X Factor a fix or rigged?

Well in our opinion we don’t believe the actual phone and text voting is fixed, that’s most likely just a conspiracy theory. On the subject of conspiracy theories though, how about this one.

During Carolynne Poole’s save me song where she sung the Faith Hill classic There You’ll Be, eagle eyed viewers may have noticed a member of the X Factor production team approaching and talking to judge Louis Walsh.

Firstly to be fair to Carolynne Louis should have been listening to her seeing as he was about to make a decision based on her performance that could change her career.

More interestingly though, moments after this conversation Louis Walsh took ages to make up his mind about who he was sending home.

During this time presenter Dermot O’leary kept telling the Irish mentor they were almost out of time and he had to make a decision right away.

Louis Walsh then stated he wanted to “Save Carolynne”, Dermot said “Who do you want to send home” then Louis changed his mind and said he wanted to “Goto deadlock”.

The decision then went to the public vote which saw Carolynne being eliminated despite having clearly sung the best. This of course leaves the question, why bother having a sing off?

Poole’s mentor Gary Barlow then walked off the set in anger later saying “It’s a joke”.

Was this all a performance linked to the earlier conversation? Did the producers who already knew the result of the public vote request this in order to keep in Rylan Clark who was branded by judge Gary Barlow the “Joke act”?

Or was this Simon Cowell’s way of getting at Barlow amid tensions between the two? Well let you decide that one.

Although we think the public vote is never fixed and those running the X Factor don’t break any rules it appears every other element of the show is carefully choreographed in order to manipulate votes and who stays in.

Then when all else fails the X Factor does have the judges vote at their disposal.

X Factor producers certainly seem to believe in the old adage there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The general theme of the show over the last few years has moved away from a singing competition and towards a pure popularity contest.

The X Factor’s only goals now appear to be rantings and profits and how they get them is irrelevant. In the early days viewers would tune in for the pure enjoyment of watching good singers sing good songs and everyone was happy.

These days the X Factor relies heavily on creating controversy to generate interest with judges acting more like politicians.

The mentors now constantly say what best serves themselves and best fits the shows narrative rather than what they clearly believe.

It’s become blatantly obvious to UK viewers in recent years that in each series at least one judge must choose a joke act. The act is selected to compete in the live finals and the more annoying the better.

There are a number of reasons why producers and boss Simon Cowell choose to do this despite publicly appearing disapproving.

Firstly this creates controversy and gets people talking about the show, even though their usually negative comments. Secondly a trend has developed where people who dislike the X Factor vote for the worse singer thinking their getting one over on Simon.

The reality though is this is exactly what Simon wants them to do. Not only is he generating voting income from people who like the show, he’s now even making money from people who hate it.

From a business point of view this is of course genius, the downside is this formula can spoil the viewing experience for fans of quality music and genuine talent.

Unfortunately as long as people keep voting for the joke acts, X Factor bosses will keep putting them in. Once in the finals the judges vote can be used to keep the act in until they’ve served their purpose and it’s time to start focusing on a winner.

In addition to having to sit through an awful vocal each week, much of the viewer frustration stems from seeing far better singers such as Carolynne Poole going out in the meantime.

Of course people aren’t being forced to watch or vote, it’s something they choose to do. Perhaps though if they don’t like what they see, viewers instead need to accept this as part of the show and vote with their TV remote controls.

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