Report: Britney Spears To Be Fired From X-Factor – Ratings Disappointment To Blame

Report: Britney Spears To Be Fired From X-Factor - Ratings Disappointment To Blame

Celeb Dirty Laundry recently reported about Britney Spears’ return to X-Factor USA next season, but now it seems that rumour was untrue, or at least only partially true, whichever way you wish to look at it. According to the latest Star magazine report, Britney might be fired from X-Factor USA.

Let’s backtrack for a second, shall we? According to television critics and media pundits, Brit-Brit is one of the best judges to come along in recent reality television history, so why would she be fired by Simon Cowell? Her performance on the X-Factor has yielded a glaringly obvious popularity increase, plus her contestant mentoring has been excellently executed throughout the first two live shows of the competition. According to an insider, “Britney’s $15 million salary has not yielded the ratings bonanza they hoped for.” Well, X-Factor hasn’t been the juggernaut talent competition we hoped for.

The show’s first season slipped under the epic wings of reality television juggernauts like American Idol and The Voice. The show’s latest, second season has also not been able to pick up the ratings Cowell hoped for when he appointed Britney as a new judge. In fact, the latest season lost roughly four million viewers during the premiere. The second season also scored the lowest viewership rating in the history of the US version of the show – a lowly 5.1 million viewers during the third part of the judges’ houses phase of the competition, which could be blamed on the rain check X-Factor USA had to take on that nasty baseball game. The first live show of the new season was also down by roughly three million viewers compared to the first season.

[Cowell] was hoping Britney would get crazy ratings for the show, but she’s been so boring. He can’t have another season of this. It’s highly unlikely she’ll be back next year, because of budget issues. She just isn’t very interesting, and the ratings have been weaker than last season,” the source explained. “She just isn’t very interesting, and the ratings have been weaker than last season. As much as he likes her, for Simon there’s no room for sentimentality in business. This is about money – and Britney’s expensive.”  She is, after all, the second highest paid judge in reality television history – Mariah Carey is the highest paid with her cool $18 million salary on Idol.

Should this tale of Britney’s firing be believed? Didn’t her stint on the show prove to be much more appealing than Nicole Scherzinger’s short run? There’s no official word yet on whether Brit-Brit will return next season, but we’re tempted to believe that Cowell won’t get rid of Britney so easily.

[Source: Star Magazine Print edition, November 19]

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