A couple of items from across the pond here,
Simon Cowell tells GMTV that the auditions for his UK hit competition show, X Factor will be held in front of a live audience.
X Factor auditions were similar to American Idol auditions, with auditioners performing in a room in front of the judges panel.
Also, he admits that Susan Boyle was having such a difficult time on Britain’s Got Talent, he told her she didn’t have to do the final if she didn’t feel up to it.
How did Susan Boyle land on BGT, despite her fragile mental state? Simon eschews psych evals for potential contestants, “What I don’t want to do at the beginning is go through a whole kind of psychological evaluation because I think, for me, that is almost discrimination.”
Last night, Susan returned to the Britain’s Got Talent tour in Glasgow, Scotland, after taking Sunday off.
Explaining the changes to the X Factor format, Simon said:
“I decided that we were going to change the way we do the auditions, for the first time in all the years that I’ve been doing these music shows and certainly on the X Factor, and we made a decision last week that we are now going to do the auditions in front of a live audience.”
He said the decision to change the audition format would help contestants as they would have an audience supporting them but denied it would make the X Factor show similar to Britain’s Got Talent.
I hope Idol producer, Ken “I never met a crappy idea I wouldn’t try” Warwick isn’t paying attention. Holding Idol auditions in front of a live audience would be oh-so lame.
About Susan Boyle,
Cowell said: “Everyone is writing about her, she’s in the spotlight and she found it difficult to cope with and, at that point, even I sat down with her and said ‘Look, if this is getting too much for you, you don’t have to go into the final, no-one is going to force you.’
“‘You do whatever you want, no-one is going to force you.’
“And she looked me in the eye and said ‘No, I want to win this competition, I want to give it a go’ and that was the decision we all made and I thought that she wanted to do it, but it was only at the moment that she lost that it hits you and you go ‘How is she going to cope with this?’ and she found it very, very difficult.”
Regarding her no-show at Manchester Sunday night,
“I genuinely didn’t know what she was going to do.
Our feeling was that there are 10 or 12 acts on the bill, but that everyone, like me said ‘We don’t want to force her into performing but hopefully you’ll enjoy the show’ – it’s a tricky one.”
Erm, Simon, you might want to revisit your psych evaluation policy…
