Has X Factor peaked too soon?

With Jedward voted off The X Factor last week the programme failed to match the numbers achieved by the popular twins – some of the audience drifted for this weekend’s programmes. And with the walk-out by Katie Price in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here it too had a similar drift in audience.

The two programmes are of course linked – on Sunday 22nd November, I’m a Celebrity posted its highest audience of the series so far, with over 10 million viewers. That was the same night that Jedward were voted out of X Factor – it had 13.8 million viewers. The peak audience for X Factor in this series was the sensational 14.3 million/48% share achieved on 15th November – by last Sunday, Jedward-less, the results show had drifted back to 13.5 million/46% share.

No-one is going to suggest that these numbers are disappointing. This time last year (29th November 2008), the two Saturday shows had 12 million/46% and 10.8 million/50% - compared with 12.3 million/48% and 13.5 million/46% on Saturday and Sunday nights.

With Jedward out of The X Factor in November, the show could concentrate on singing in the semi-final and final stages. But it also took out an element of entertainment, which seems to have eroded some viewing.

Likewise, once Katie Price concluded she was fed up with being subjected by the viewer votes to daily trials, the show’s audiences drifted away – 10 million/35% on Sunday 22nd had fallen to 8.6 million/32% share on Sunday.

Which begs the question – could ITV have managed this in such a way as to maintain the audience interest through to the end of the series? If it were a soap, for instance, the storyline arc could have been controlled to peak just before Christmas. To do that with X Factor would it have meant the stars of this series – Jedward – staying in to the final. In the case of Celebrity, Katie Price would have been needed through to the last show.

However to manage this would mean ITV taking a more active role in guiding the shows – something that is not possible in a viewer-driven programme, especially after the phone-line problems of recent years.

In the case of Jedward, although the public vote meant they didn’t get enough viewers to back them and so found themselves in the last two, but it was the judges vote which dispatched them. It might be argued that they would have survived only one more week – last weekend’s results were determined by the viewer vote alone. But it seems odd that the producers of the show did not take the opportunity to keep the bandwagon rolling for one more week.

In the case of Katie Price, who found herself on the receiving end of viewer votes night after night, obliging her to take part in a daily trial, it was not a viewer vote which took her out of the jungle, but her own decision to walk out early. Could the producers have done more to keep her in the jungle? Could they have ruled her out of the voting for a day or two?

Obviously such questions are academic but highlight the difficulties in balancing the priorities of audience maximization against the vagaries of viewer votes and on-screen talent.

Here’s the dilemma – the more it seemed the public, or newspapers, didn’t like Jedward or Katie, the more the audience watched the show. Take them out and interest subsides. Should a programme’s priority be to maximize audience – or find a new singing star to top the charts? Depends who’s answering the question – ITV as a network will have its eye on the numbers, the X Factor producers will also have their eye on who’s going to be recording hits next year.