Could the X Factor UK results shows take a page from Dancing with the Stars?

This year marks the first time in many years that we haven’t covered The X Factor UK at length, and there’s a good reason for it. The thrill of doing the show is gone. It’s over-exposed, the talent isn’t top-tier anymore, and it feels like the tone of the competition is wrong at this point. We’d prefer to see the show do something more to embrace its fun side, and not dive too much into serious stories and intensity all of the time.

One other change that may be coming at the moment is to the results-show format. According to the Daily Mail, show boss Simon Cowell is looking at potentially scrapping the results show format as we know it, and going with something that offers up more competition, performances, and celebrity guests both on Saturday and Sunday. He wants both shows to have equal weight in order to convince viewers to watch the show twice a week as opposed to just watching one show and scrapping the other.

If we were to hand down one bit of advice to Cowell and his team on this subject, though, it’d be this: Find a way to concentrate down the number of shows that you do in general. You don’t need a results show, and we’d prefer they adopt the format of Dancing with the Stars in America or even the later seasons of American Idol. Give performances every week, and then in the following week eliminate someone based on the votes from the week before. Nobody needs to sit through an hour-long show anymore to get results. It’s less of a commitment, and at the same time it’s also a way to refresh the format slightly.

This is a show that, clearly, needs to do something. Ratings have been falling for years, and even if the talent pool at this point doesn’t have anywhere near the same luster that it once did, there still should be enough prospective superstars out there for the series to be able to get some buzz around them. The biggest problem that the show has is effectively the show itself, which isn’t changing enough for the market in 2017 and is relying more on the things that made it successful five years ago. Things need to change in television, and more often than not, they need to change incredibly quickly.

We’ll see what happens with some of the X Factor results shows a little bit later this fall. For now, this remains a very intriguing question mark for the series.

What do you think: Should the X Factor results go more in the direction of Dancing with the Stars in the future? Be sure to share in the comments below! (Photo: ITV.)