X Factor Italy dispenses with gender, age categories.
Talent show makes a world-first move for the format by tossing out its traditional labels.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Italy’s X Factor has announced a world-first for the format by dispensing with its gender and age categories.
Normally contestants are divided into 4 groups: Males, Females, Over 25s and Groups.
In their upcoming season judges Emma, Hell Raton, Manuel Agnelli and Mika will mentor varied groups with at least one soloist and one band on their team.
Antonella d’Errico, executive vice president of programming at Sky Italia, said: “By removing the historical division by categories, X Factor welcomes change and wants to become a torchbearer and, in a world that no longer needs to make distinctions of gender or age, talent is for us a neutral noun. We will ask all the contestants of this year’s edition to bring the only thing they really need: their personal, unique X Factor.”
Fremantle Italy CEO Gabriele Immirzi added: “We are in fact the first X Factor in the world to change a historic and characterising element of the format that today, in 2021, according with Syco Entertainment, we feel is not up-to-date with the reality of everyday life, especially the life of the generations who participate in X Factor. We want to support the growth of music talents without labels and distinctions other than the value and artistic quality of their projects.”
X Factor was last staged in Australia in 2016, won by Isaiah Firebrace.
Source: Deadline
Share
- Tagged with The X Factor
6 Responses
25 was the threshold for the special age category? Gosh, I don’t even know why 25 year olds even bother, they’ve probably already graduated _university_ ewwwww.
Thats a good move. In the Australian version, there were always great 25+ year olds that didn’t make the top 12 while ordinary teenagers made it in purely because it was slim pickings in their category.
I think the Final Aus Season had a good idea where the categories were; men, women, groups and wildcards. Its a shame it took until the final season to think of that.
Well, finally the mystery of what became of Mika is solved….(assuming that is in fact Mika of ‘Grace Kelly’ fame)
Yes its that Mika. He’s been a judge on the show for quite some time.
Mika is now doing his fourth series of The X Factor Italy and he also done 6 series of The Voice France ….
Not too surprising – was inevitable the gender based categories would go at least, though a risk dropping the age brackets will remove the older contestants from the finals.
P.S. That set looks great.