I am not sure I agree entirely that there is a significant bias toward potentially 'vote getting/money making' contestants for a talent show such as X Factor.

I suggest it be quite difficult to conclusively determine that a particular contestant's audition was not successful because of a perceived lack of public voting appeal/potential from the show's targeted demographic, rather than their success or otherwise being determined by the actual quality of their audition.

I do however agree that there needs to be some commercial overlay to the process - obviously the show needs to make money, and therefore some natural bias toward performers likely to generate votes in the selection/audition process needs to exist, that may regrettably be at the expense of some genuinely talented performers who just don't have what the judges believe will generate votes (and album sales in the future). (If the viewers are passionate about this commercial reality, I sincerely hope they vote with their remotes and simply not support the show.) The same commercial realities also exist in the TV/movie business?

As long as there is Person/Company X trying to work out who they can make the most money from out of Person A, B & C, that bias will always exist, like it or not....

But how prevalent is that bias in the audition process? I don't think it is as strong as has been perhaps suggested. I believe true talent is more often than not rewarded in the audition process on shows like X Factor, regardless of voting potential.

While it is not an entirely fair basis for illustration (different show and all), I think it would be reasonable to perhaps speculate that Susan Boyle would not have got past the very early stages of the BGT audition process, if that bias indeed existed so strongly - she would have been seen to arguably have been outside the broad, financially attractive 'prepared to SMS' voting demographic? Her ultimate success I think is also due to the ability of the public voters to, over the show's duration, increasingly recognise and reward true talent (who actually won it again?). Having said that, SuBo is immensely more talented than anyone on X Factor....

In summary therefore, I believe that there is indeed a degree of credibility in the process to offset the necessary commercial realities that drive many of the audition and judging decisions - admittedly, that credibility however is a little hard to see!
Submitted by Michael from Kudla on 03-11-2010

Meet karaoke hosts and singers in the Where2sing.com forums . . .

Where2sing.com