Popularity Factor

Another one tieing in with the muggle studies music homework....

Popularity Factor: A Look at the UK’s Reality Music Search Television Programmes

This essay is going to look at the immense popularity of reality talent television programmes in recent times. In the last few years, England as a nation has become Reality TV obsessed, perhaps since the start of Big Brother back in 1999. But the one genre that we are seeing over and over again are music talent programmes – the search to find the new Robbie Williams, or the new Blue.

The first of these was Popstars, back in 2001. The first of its kind in a long time (there was, of course, “Opportunity Knocks” the long running talent search series that was hosted by Hughie Green in the 1970’s), Popstars set the ball rolling for talent search TV programmes.

Popstars, as the first of its kind, was all pre-recorded. The judges were “Nasty” Nigel Lythgoe and Nikki Chapman, and the winners of the show went on to form Hear’Say. They had a slight success, before splitting. Kym Marsh is now in the ITV soap Coronation Street, Myleene Klass is an opera singer, Suzanne Shaw is now in the West End and the other two have disappeared. The five runners up formed the band Liberty X, who have had a large success and are still releasing singles today. The show also gave us Darius Danesh…but more on him later.

The public lapped up this television programme, and were soon craving another, which is why, near the end of 2001, we saw “Pop Idol” come to our screens for the first time. This was a little different to Popstars, this time, the audience were able to vote for their favourite. And vote they did. Hosted by the fabulous Ant and Dec, the show was a massive success, launching the careers of winner Will Young (still going strong today), runner up Gareth Gates (recently dropped by his record label) and Darius Danesh (has had a few hits).

But the rise of this type of programming didn’t stop there. The public were calling out for more…and so in the latter half of 2002 we were given “Popstars: The Rivals”. Hosted by Davina McCall, and with judges Louis Walsh, Pete Waterman and Geri Halliwell, the idea was to form a boy band and a girl band and have them go head to head for the coveted Christmas number one spot.

The programme found their two bands: Girls Aloud and One True Voice. Girls Aloud were the winners, reaching Christmas number one in 2002 with “Sound of the Underground”. One True Voice’s effort “Shakespeare’s Way With Words” managed to climb to number two, but they were soon forgotten as Girls Aloud became ever more popular.

In 2003-2004 we were given “Pop Idol 2”, with judges Simon Cowell, Pete Waterman, Nikki Chapman and Neil “Dr” Fox. The winner was Michelle McManus, and she went on to have moderate success with her first single and album. The runners up, Sam and Mark joined forces and became a duo, releasing one ill-fated single and doing a tour of Britain’s secondary schools (including my old school), before becoming CBBC presenters.

2004 saw the format of reality-TV music talent search change, with The X Factor. With a judging panel headed by Simon Cowell, Sharon Osborne and Louis Walsh and presented by Kate Thornton, this was a talent search like no other before.

Previously, only those people aged between sixteen and twenty-four were allowed to participate, as soloists. The X Factor shook things up a bit by having three categories: 16-24’s, Groups and 25’s and over. Each judge took one of those groups to mentor, and after weeks of auditions and live shows, the winner was announced as Steve Brookstein. He had one number one with a cover of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds”, but soon faded into obscurity and lost his record deal.

And then, in 2005, we had the second series of X Factor. With exactly the same format, and the same judges as before, we saw Shayne Ward being crowned the winner, and taking the 2005 Christmas Number One spot.

And now, May 2006, we are currently slap bang in the middle of a celebrity version of The X Factor. With such Z-Listers as Lucy Benjamin (who?), some TV chefs (why?) and a TV Health analyst who looks at poo for a living (eww), has our obsession as a nation with reality music programmes gone to far?

With another series of The X Factor planned, and the format being used all over the world, are we in danger of seeing our charts taken over by reality TV winners and runners up?

One thing can be said: Simon Cowell must be a very rich man indeed.

50 points.