Steve Jones (Nino Munoz - Fox)
“I wont be hosting next seasons X Factor which is a shame but I cant complain as Ive had a great time. Good luck to everyone on the show,” “X Factor” host Steve Jones tweeted Monday evening.
Fox later announced that both Jones and judge Nicole Scherzinger are gone from the show.
Tuesday morning, there were some rumblings that Paula Abdul might be out, too.
News of Jones’s booting came as a surprise to no one. Even before creator Simon Cowell put out word late last year that he was going to make “improvements” to the show for the next season, The Reporters Who Cover Television had been circling Jones and Scherzinger for months as though they were flotsam and jetsam of the so-called improving. Various tabloids reported ages ago that Jones’s contract would not be renewed.
Fox suits said in December that they would sit down in January and talk to a few focus groups, comb through the data, present their findings to the producers and then let Simon decide who would get it in the neck. Right around now!
In the final weeks of the season’s “X Factor,” Steve was noticeably lacking the carefully tended 26-hour facial growth that is the standard for American reality-show hosts — a clear sign the situation was dire. We all knew somebody was going to pay for the show’s disappointing ratings. Cowell had promised that the American version of his British hit would take down “American Idol” and attract at least 20?million viewers. Instead, “X Factor” didn’t even put up a good fight in its first season in the United States, even against “Idol’s” depleted audience levels.
And because we’ve watched lots of CBS’s “Undercover Boss,” we know that when the top guy (Simon) tries to figure out what’s gone wrong with his vision, some poor middle-level slob usually gets blamed. That meant you, Steve.
As chief timekeeper and rule enforcer, Jones should have studied up on “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest, who manages to make the wrangling of over-egoed singing-competition judges look super-easy. But Jones, the Welsh model turned handsome TV-show host, managed to make it look grim, including one memorable moment in the show’s first season when he told “X”-testants to stop hugging because he had an interview to conduct with the booted singer.
On the other hand, Jones lent a desperately needed daffy artlessness to the show’s aura of self-importance. Like the time he summed up Lenny Kravitz’s results-night performance with, “Handsome man!”
Gosh, we’re going to miss Steve!
Scherzinger, on the other hand, we won’t miss at all.
Originally cast to co-host the show, the former Pussycat Doll became a last-minute replacement for one of the show’s four judge/mentors, Cheryl Cole. In that role, Scherzinger was a triumph of beauty over brains. Simon said it best when he announced, after Scherzinger took to the stage in one episode to sing her new tune, “Pretty,” that he would critique her performance Nicole-style:
“I believe in you. You believe in me. You transcend the universe. God is smiling on you. Life is a waterfall, and you are the ultimate rainbow.”
At a news conference Fox staged in Los Angeles to try to gin up a bigger audience for the season finale, Scherzinger declined to confirm she’d be back as a judge next season but did pave the way for a graceful exit, saying: “It has been very hard on me, the elimination process. It’s something I could never have been prepared for.”
