Three strikes and you’re out
The X Factor is back. Sixteen performers will take the stage, in the first of the season’s live shows. By the end of the week, 12 singers will remain. Will anyone care?
It’s not a pointless question: The X Factor’s return coincides with the end of the World Series. And while there appears to be little connection between the two on the face of it — one is a struggling reality show, the other a big-league sporting event — the annual baseball playoffs are having an increasingly larger say in which TV programs succeed and which fail.
Fox, X Factor’s parent network, is committed to three weeks of baseball interruptions each fall, which means hiatuses, delays and preemptions to its regularly scheduled programming.
Some shows never recover. New Girl, for example, was a breakout hit when it debuted last September. By the time the baseball break ended, much of New Girl’s early audience disappeared, never to come back. New Girl has struggled ever since.
When The X Factor returns Tuesday, enough time has passed that even ardent fans may have forgotten who’s who among the remaining singers. The X Factor will also be pitted for the first time against The Voice, head-to-head, in the same time period. The Voice, which has hit one high note after another this season, has steadily been gaining momentum since its September debut. Not only is The Voice locked in on Mondays and Tuesdays but, last week, parent network NBC added three weeks of Thursday shows.
The show must go on, though, and it will go on. As it stands, The X Factor will air Tuesday. The twohour show will be repeated Wednesday on CTV Two, with the season’s Top 12 revealed in a live show on Oct. 31. (Fox, Wednesday, CTV Two, Fox) ■ It’s times like this that CBC decision makers are probably grateful they don’t have to deal with the baseball playoffs — or Simon Cowell. Hockey won’t wreck CBC’s prime time schedule until spring. That leaves Rick Mercer to do what Mercer does best: Entertain the country. In this week’s Rick Mercer Report, the intrepid traveller ventures to Salmon Arm, B.C., where he partakes in hydrofoiling on Shuswap Lake. Next up: The 163rd Annual Fall Fair in Erin, Ont., where Mercer tries his hand at minichuckwagon racing and takes in a cattle show. (CBC) ■ The Voice will go on, regardless of baseball preemptions, last-minute rescheduling or sudden cancellations to other programs — except in the case of civil emergency, that is. Tuesday’s program is the second night of the knockout rounds; the Top 20 singers will perform live Nov. 3 and 4. (CTV Two, NBC) ■ King & Maxwell closes for business with Tuesday’s season — and series — finale. The finale, Pandora’s Box, features a split between Sean King (Jon Tenney) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn), after King refuses to let go of his investigation into a recent assassination. He said, she said. Either way, the show is over. (Showcase)