X-Factor was just one in a whole swathe of programmes which played into the delusion that celebrity and fame are the goal, and music (or, more often, "music") was just the means to that end.
I'm not surprised it's gone past its sell-by date, though I fear that it will take more than the demise of X-Factor to unravel the distorting influence it, and programmes like it, have had on people's perception of the music industry.
These shows are not - and were never - about music. They were about creating a public spectacle, often quite abusively and at the expense of the performers who so eagerly signed up for their chance at fame and fortune. So far as I know, nobody who has come through that process, and had any kind of career as a result, has made that much of an impact on music, generally, and many who did get through have been sorely disappointed at how their ability has been co-opted by the same kind of Svengali-like opportunist promoters and labels to serve merely as "product".
I would suspect that none, or very few, of the bands or artists who have made an impact on the music scene over the last 6 decades would have got a look-in if their career path had started with X-Factor.
