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Cowell and Green go to Vegas with ‘The X Factor’
With network TV revenues falling, the two entrepreneurs pin hopes on the internet
Simon Cowell, the waxed supremo of TV talent contests, has made advanced plans to bring the The X Factor to Las Vegas as a global pay-per-view internet venture - according to his partner in the scheme, Topshop boss Sir Philip Green.
Cowell and Green are in negotiations with a major hotel-casino in Las Vegas to find a permanent home for a new version of the show to go out twice a week.
"The plan is to take it to Vegas... we'll have a permanent place,” Green told GQ magazine. “The home of The X Factor - live from Vegas. It'll all be online. You have 20, 30, 40 million people tuning in twice a week. You bring two or three hundred million viewers to a venue. It's turning it up a peg."
The pair are also planning to establish similar straight-to-web shows from locations around the world, taking Bernie Ecclestone’s worldwide Grand Prix venues as their model.
Of course, money is the key: as US network television faces dramatic declines in revenue, the challenge will be to unlock new, direct streams of revenue from audiences who are increasingly abandoning broadcast and cable television and relying solely on the internet.
This could be Cowell's opportunity to make himself into a global broadcasting mogul. The spin-offs from The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent have already proved highly lucrative, making Cowell the highest paid US TV star after Oprah, and created stars out of Leona Lewis and Scotland's Susan Boyle.
His contract as a judge on American Idol expires in May next year and he's already hinted that he may not renew for another term. But if this internet plan is purely a rush for cash, Cowell would do well to review the experience of shock-jock Howard Stern who abandoned traditional radio for satellite radio (with a massive pay cheque) but became culturally irrelevant in the process.
Still, with Cowell's genius for selling pop talent and Green's rag-trade know-how, it’s possible they will create a global entertainment and retail monster. And it'll be direct to your computer. ·
