Is anyone sick of talent shows?

Post Reply New Topic

I am wondering how long the public will endure talent shows. I know they seem to love them and we never hear about much else these days. Do you have them in the US and are they as pervasive there as they are in the UK. Do you know Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole? I cannot stand either of them. The X factor is dire. I think some of the kids who go on there have great voices but then the winner is always given a really crap song to sing. Cheryl Cole is like the super celebrity in the UK at the moment. She is beautiful. But that is all. She cannot sing and was only in some silly girl group for a few years. Now she is as famous as Lady Di was!

Some of our older rock stars are voicing their opinions on X Factor and saying its killing music and I agree. They only produce bland songs performed in the same way by cuddly looking young singers. There is no variety on these shows. BTW I never watch them, but I know about them because they are always in the papers, always on some other tv show (like the news!) or people are always talking about them. Really crap.

Although I think Susan Boyle did very well and had a sweet voice.

I want a backlash to start against Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole

I have mixed feelings.

I just don't go for those type of shows, but I can see the attraction. Some really talented people are out there.

What Hollywood is realizing is that life's drama is better and more diverse than what most of their current writers can think up, and you'd be amazed how many talented "entertainers" never go anywhere because they can't get the attention of the few places with the resources to make them famous.

i am not sick of them because i am not required to watch them.

I see them as an opportunity to turn the telly off. I can't stand them I dont like celebrities either with their big egos and very tiny brains. They're like chemically enhanced aliens

You now owe an apology to chemically enhanced aliens.

Yes, we have shows like this and most of them seem to be adapted from corresponding UK versions. We have American Idol (competition to find singers) on which Simon Cowell was a judge. If Cheryl Cole is the person I think she is (the blond judge on Britain's Got Talent?) then I only know of her from the clip of Susan Boyle's breakout performance on that show. We also have "Dancing With The Stars" which I think was adapted from a similar UK show and even "Ice Skating With The Stars".

I absolutely hate talent shows, they're pointless cheap TV, especially since you rarely ever hear from the winners once the series is over anyway.

No the blond woman is not Cheryl Cole. The blond woman is an actress I think. Cheryl Cole has brown hair and is younger.

I'm utterly sick of them because they're only talent shows in loosest sense of the word - really they're just an exercise in mass emotional manipulation and marketing.

That said, I'm completely hooked on this year's The Apprentice, which is kind of like an anti-talent show, since most of the contestants only real talent is trying to say ridiculously obnoxious (and unsubstantiated) things louder than each other. It's like the producers read Tom Wolf's Bonfire of the Vanities and though "hey, we can make a reality show out of this..."

I don't watch any of them. I love music, and these shows tend to destroy good music. Although I didn't see the show, I will always remember the truly diabolic version of "Hallelujah" that came out of one of these shows. It was playing on every station just before Christmas, and as someone who loves both Leonard Cohen and KD Lang's versions of that song (listen to the Lang version... it's just gobsmacking) I was offended that such sophisticated, mystical lyrics were dumbed down to "crappy love song."

waste of time really i mean its so fixed hey?

I just read in the news that Cheryl Cole has landed a $6 million record deal in America. Attention all US citizens: She is nothing but a pretty face. She has a dull personality, a really croaky and weak voice, crap songs and thinks she is royalty. I hope the US see through all the marketing rubbish that I'm sure will be thrown at you. Believe me she is nothing to get excited about (unless she is in penthouse).

Well said. What I cannot believe is the way the public lap it all up. This is not music at its best. It is cheap, diluted pop thrown together by people who are more interested in making money than music.

The apprentice is ok because Alan Sugar is brilliant at delivering his verdict on the contestants. And the apprentice is practical and teaches the viewer quite a lot about business. I watch it too and love the bit at the end when they all start blaming each other! What a lovely NT world we live in.

I'm in the U.S. and yeah, I'm sick of them. I don't watch them either, I'm just another one who's sick of hearing about them. I have a disabled niece who is not too disabled to us Facebook, and the little dear is always carping about her great loves... she has a passion for certain sports teams, she is completely taken with Twilight, and she adores Dancing with the Stars. She often says she has to get ready to watch Dancing with the Stars. I don't know what that means...

But it isn't just her... every time a list of news headlines pops up anywhere, there seems to be a headline, an actual headline, about some surprise win on one of these shows. I remember seeing a tiny news article on some back page of a newspaper years ago about a large ferry that sank in the Black Sea resulting in 800 deaths. You could hardly notice the article on such a tragic occurrence, I couldn't believe the papers had put it in such an obscure place. It's nice to see that the press now has their priorities straight.

I did watch one of these shows a long time ago. It was called Star Search and was hosted by Ed McMahon. We watched it for laughs. It was in a non-prime time spot on a Saturday and it was funny has heck to see the singers. It was always the same. They'd start out singing some tired old ballad, their voice rises into an interlude or whatever those things are where the song sounds a bit different, then they come belting out into the song again like a racecar bursting out of a tunnel and always, always sang it louder and the audience ALWAYS applauded at this point as if singing louder was some kind of achievement and as though no one had ever done this before. And we would laugh harder then than we laughed at the comedy portion.

Yes, I am sick of them.

Absolutely. Iwatched the X Factor this weekend to see what the calibre of this year's contestants is like. There's one person who actually has any kind of stage presence and the rest can barely sing at best. Seriously, if they're the best that modern Britain has got to offer then I'm quite happy sticking to my 70's/90's record collection.



The boardroom is definitely the best bit. I'm just fascinated by the mind-boggling lack of self-awareness that a bunch of rampant egos in a tense situation can display.