Unless you have been living in a cave off the coast of Scotland for the last month or so then you will not have escaped the fact a certain Matt Cardle won X-Factor and is sitting pretty with the Christmas number one.
While Mr Cardle was starting to enjoy his millionaire lifestyle the programme sent the media into a wild frenzy talking about its favourite subject – itself!
The winner only got a passing mention as most of the euphoria was about the fact up to 20m watched the final show; how much an advert cost during it; did this mean a return to the good times for terrestrial TV; what would Simon Cowell do now, would he abandon the UK for the USA, as we all collectively went X-Factor mad.
Various ‘gurus’ were wheeled out to say that at £250,000 a 30 second slot was excellent value to promote your favourite product – and so near to Christmas. Others talked about how it ‘connected with its audience’ and showed any Tom, Dick or Harriett could live their dream. Days later it was still in the news but this time because of the record number of complaints the regulator had received about the clothes, or lack of them, some of the female performers on the show wore which combined with ‘suggestive gyrating’ was just too much for many a sensitive soul. But the show was still making headlines.
One thing though was certain; the X-Factor thoroughly trounced the BBC’s reality TV show competition – Strictly Come Dancing when it came to audience figures.
For those involved in the travel and media business this may have stirred memories of another time the Beeb and ITV went head to head. This time the two contenders were; in the red corner for the BBC, ‘The Holiday Programme’ and in the blue corner for ITV, ‘Wish You Were Here........?
For three decades these two programmes fought for audiences, reporting from ever more exotic destinations to try and encourage the cautious Brit to go further than Bognor and that not all foreign food was bad for you.
Their presenters became household names; Joan Bakewell, Anne Gregg and Frank Bough among those fronting for the BBC, while ITV mustered Judith Chalmers, Anthea Turner and Anna Walker to its ranks.
Avidly watched by millions, travel companies and their PR people bent over backwards to get their holidays featured. With destination reports lasting up to eight minutes it guaranteed to get the phones ringing in the booking office.
According to one seasoned travel PR specialist enquiries after a client had appeared could easily run into several thousand.
Sadly neither programme survived the first decade of the new millennium and nothing has emerged to replace them. But could there still be a place for such a programme in today’s TV schedules?
We appear to be travelling more than ever, just look at the success of Ryanair and Easyjet. The internet has made booking your own flight, hire car, hotel etc something that can be done in minutes. Whereas in the heyday of those two programmes you would have had to pop into your local travel agent – the only place with the ability to offer the travel junky their fix.
That may just be it, making travel arrangements is no longer the preserve of an elite, slightly mysterious industry, anyone can do it. Many like to travel independently, rather than booking an inclusive package where everything is taken care of from the time you arrive at the airport to the time you got back - the sort of holidays those programmes thrived on.
Maybe ‘The Holiday Programme’ and ‘Wish You Were Here....?’ were part of that whole mystery and awe which once surrounded travel which the internet has been so good at stripping away.
In addition we now live in a multi channel digital age. Virtually every home now has access to 100s of channels, some of course claim to offer travel programmes but what both the viewers think of it is hard to know.
Sadly programmes like The Holiday Programme and Wish You Were......Here? will never have their own x-factor again!
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