Bloomberg News reports that because American Idol and X Factor are consistently falling in the ratings, News Corp (Fox's parent company) is hurting.

News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media company, fell the most in eight months in Sydney trading after cutting its profit forecast because of declining ratings for shows such as “American Idol” and “X Factor.”
Operating income will grow by a “mid- to high-single- digit” percentage for the fiscal year ending in June, the company said on a conference call late yesterday, down from an earlier forecast of growth that could exceed 10 percent. Fewer viewers leads to lower advertising sales for some of the top programs on the News Corp.-owned Fox network in the U.S.
“We have had a very disappointing year ratings-wise,”Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on the conference call. “We’re working to improve them.”

Honestly, does anyone see American Idol and X Factor doing anything besides becoming even less popular this year? Fox may need to kill off at least one of the shows to try to save the other. (Story via MJ's Big Blog)

As VFTW's gracefully going away after the season, we want to do some final tributes to remember all the awesome times we've had here, and the fun part is our members are going to be a big part of this! Here's how it's going to work: First, we've decided on three basic categories:

1-Top VFTW American Idol Performances Ever (eg. Sanjaya You Really Got Me, Brooke White's false start, etc)

2-Top VFTW Non-American Idol Performances or Moments Ever (Canadian Idol, X Factor (US and UK), Voice, DWTS, etc.)

3-Top VFTW Stories/Moments Ever (eg. Sanjaya Mania, Antonella photos, Caden, Dave on Letterman, Stacy Francis, anything tard related, etc)

First, we want you to nominate your favorites in these categories (there's no limit to the amount of things you nominate). Please post everything in this thread. Here are some sources you can use to help you remember...

Dave's awesome thread reviewing the early days of VFTW through Season 6

My review of Season 8 and 2009 in general

My review of Season 9 and 2010

My review of Season 10 and 2011

The recent VFTW Memories Thread

-also, look through contestant index threads. I still have access to our VFTW Hall Of Fame forum and I can list all the stuff in there.

We want to start these tributes by late February, so let's nominate stuff till around Feb. 10. Then we'll consolidate everything and set-up an online voting thing, and then we'll begin the tributes (I'll explain how we'll do this later). We hope some of our members write some of the articles we'll be posting.

There's a national emergency: No, I'm not talking about the fiscal cliff, the dreadful economy or gun violence. No, this emergency is much more serious: #WGWG5 Phillip Phillips can't make one of the stupid New Year's Eve TV shows he was scheduled to perform on. What is America going to do? Who could possibly replace Phillip? I know, let's get another WGWG as Tate Stevens has been tabbed to replace Phil. It's the perfect choice as people won't even notice the difference!

Meanwhile, this is another slap in the face for Simon Cowell as this is proof that all his stupid show has produced is just an interchangeable version of the same winner American Idol's had five years running.

2012 has been a year of utter failure for Simon Cowell, and it ends appropriately as it's being reported Simon's going to fire his own handpicked judge Britney Spears. Simon wanted the crazy Britney (like the one on the left!) and layed down $15 million of Fox's money to get her and save his show. Instead, he got someone so medicated that she was restricted to three words per critique that were written down for her...and she still got them wrong!

Simon's on quite a roll. Meanwhile, Britney shouldn't be too upset as she's so out of it she probably doesn't even know she was on the show.