The latest in a long line of reality/talent shows, Fame Academy, quickly dubbed Lame Academy, has failed to impress the viewers.

So have the shows started by Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks reached the end of the line?

THE mix of Big Brother reality TV and a Pop Stars-style talent show seemed a dead cert for ratings supremacy. The BBC didn't doubt for a minute that it would have a hit on its hands by combining two of today's most popular genres. Producers certainly needed the programme to be a success after spending a rumoured £4.5m on putting together the series.

But Fame Academy has been given the thumbs down by viewers, with audiences reaching a new low of 3.3m for one of this week's three episodes. The big question is why? Perhaps it proves you can't fool all of the viewers all of the time.

Fame Academy, swiftly dubbed Lame Academy by critics, was seen for what it was - a calculated attempt to get yet more mileage out of the stale talent show format by pulling together aspects from tried and tested series.

Not only are there three BBC1 episodes each week, but additional shows on BBC Choice and CBBC as well as a weekend omnibus. Viewers can keep up to date on radio online and by telephone. Live webchats and mobile updates are available too. The word "overkill" springs to mind. After all, it's only a hi-tech version of old-style talent shows such as Opportunity Knocks and New Faces.

The BBC was also late jumping on the bandwagon. Commercial television has been busy flogging the format to death for some time. Pop Stars, which led to Hear'Say being formed, was followed by Pop Idols, which made chart-toppers of Will Young and Gareth Gates. Fame Academy had the misfortune to start while ITV's latest variation, Pop Stars: The Rivals, was already under way. The series - which aims to form a boy band and a girl band - is achieving respectable viewing figures without scaling the heights, or the attendant publicity, that Pop Stars/Pop Idols did.

Some viewers simply can't cope with another hands-on show that requires them to get dialling to vote for their favourite singers. So many TV shows offer phone polls that you could spend your entire day ringing up, leaving little time to watch any telly.

The producers of Fame Academy are also reckoned to have committed the fatal error of electing not to screen excerpts from the audition process. Thousands of applicants from around the country applied to join. Unlike Pop Idol and Pop Stars, we didn't see them, jumping straight to the final 12 who'd been selected to compete. Half the fun of previous talent shows has been watching the parade of out-of-tune, untalented, frankly hopeless hopefuls who turned up to perform at auditions under the mistaken impression that they were in with a chance.

The programme began as the final 12 competitors moved into the £35m mansion in North London that's been converted into a music academy complete with its own teachers, dance studios, gym, bedrooms and relaxation areas. Music stars like Shania Twain have been popping along to give masterclasses.

One student a week is being evicted. Teachers nominate three and the great British viewing public - well, those still watching - decides which one will get the boot. The academy, based in London's second largest privately-owned stately home, has a hot tub for students to relax in. Except this isn't to make their life more comfortable. This is a vital component for the Big Brotherish side of the programme as cameras follow the students day and night over the ten-week run.

There's an outside chance that a major event, preferably something involving sex or tears or both, will cause Fame Academy to catch the public imagination at long last. Otherwise, the series will limp along until the winner emerges to collect the prize - the opportunity to be launched on a music and entertainment career.

The lack of interest in Fame Academy shouldn't be taken as a signal that the public is fed up with TV talent shows, more that they're fed up with the current crop. Such programmes have constantly reinvented themselves, with the basic formula remaining the same.

Only the way the winner is chosen changes with the times. Now we have phone polls to pick the winners. In the old days, Hughie Green had his "clapometer" on Opportunity Knocks to decide the winner in the studio. That was only a moral victory. The real winner was chosen from the thousands of postcards sent in by viewers before the following show.

None of today's talent shows will be able to match the longevity of OpKnocks, which began on Radio Luxembourg in the early 1950s before moving to ITV soon after the advent of commercial television. There had been talent shows on TV before - hands up those who remember Carroll Levis Discoveries - but none displayed the staying power of that programme. It survived ITV franchise changes and, after being cancelled by that channel, resurfaced later on the BBC.

New Faces was described as "Opportunity Knocks with bite". Instead of avuncular Hughie Green being nice about contestants, the panel of experts was often downright nasty about untalented new faces. Long before Simon Cowell was earning his Mr Nasty reputation on Pop Idol, Tony Hatch and later Nina Myskov were being booed for being honest in their remarks about the lack of talent on view.

Those two shows can claim to have discovered stars who went on to have - and, in some cases, still have - successful careers. How different to Pop Stars with its Hear'Say today, gone tomorrow type of fleeting fame and fortune. Mind you, even that group's brief success is better than the indifference that has greeted Fame Academy.

* Fame Academy continues on BBC1 on Tuesday and Thursday at 7pm, and Friday at 8.30pm.

Published: 02/11/2002