"It's good to see you again."
Marlo Aniston, the host of X-Star said, shaking hands with Aiden. Both of them were meeting each other after a year and the last time they had talked to each other was when Aiden was eliminated from the show.
This time, they were meeting for entirely different reasons.
"Yeah, it seems like you are doing good. I heard the ratings of the show are all time high this season too." Aiden said, sitting down on the sofa.
They were currently in one of the lounge rooms. As they were meeting after a long time, there was a lot to catch upto to.
"It's just hanging around the same ratings as the last season. We are not able to beat it this season but we are way above par, so the channel is pretty silent about it."
"I thought it was different since I heard a lot of good things."
"Good things don't equate to good ratings." Marlo shrugged but knew that this wasn't anything surprising in the reality show industry. "We even decided to invite old contestants from last season because of that."
Panther TV wasn't putting any pressure on the X-Star production team this season, but Marlo knew that the third season of the show was its peak. Every show had it and after that, no matter what they did, they would stay below it.
These sometimes become reasons for shows to get cancelled, especially ones like X-Star.
"No one else responded positively?" Aiden asked, raising an eyebrow.
"They are already involved in other schedules. Cyco media has Rachel running hard and she's not even in the US and Cameron straight out refused when we contacted. Only you responded well and now, we are here."
Marlo leaned back on his seat with a smile. Aiden was always one of the contestants he wanted to do good for himself and he was doing pretty well.
It made him feel nice because he had seen Aiden moving up from the bottom.
"Seems like you all are in quite a tough situation."
"Yeah, Gary, the producer, wants to top the ratings of last season anyhow, so we invited a few celebs to fill the guest list. Used all our connections, but we still there's no full guarantee. Last year's finale was watched a lot and it was even trending number one on Sparrow."
"In that case, we could only do our best."
Aiden said and Marlo agreed.
After that, both of them discussed things about the shooting and the rehearsals. As it was the finale, there needed to be a lot of rehearsals to make sure that the performance was good enough.
When Aiden was in X-Star last year, he had been eliminated before the finale, so he never got the chance to truly give a performance at the level of a concert. For this one, there was going to be a whole band assigned to him.
Though, it wasn't really necessary as 'Lost in the Sky' didn't need a lot of instruments.
To discuss all these things, Marlo and Aiden had a lot of discussions as to how the latter wanted the things to be done.
***
Time passed by very quickly as Aiden worked around the X-Star set, doing rehearsals for his performance and eventually getting it on with the actual shooting.
It was time consuming but a part and parcel of the business.
Aiden tried to just have fun with it and it was indeed nice to talk with the judges that he had seen for the first time last year. He noticed that there was a bit of a difference as to how they were treating him now.
It was because in their eyes, Aiden was a rising mainstream singer now.
Not just another contestant.
He also got to talk to the contestants that have reached the finals this year. Though, it was a brief talk, he was able to check their skill levels and he was pretty surprised to see that not one of them was Intermediate Grade 2.
Four of them were on Basic Grade 10 and only one was on Intermediate Grade 1, which Aiden guessed would be the winner.
He related it with the fact that this year's ratings of X-Star hadn't been great and thought that it was because of how rare a contestant at Rachel or Cameron level was.
It was already very lucky that both of them entered the competition at the same time last year.
Aiden was sure that X-Star wasn't going to get that lucky anytime soon again.
Like that, the shooting went on as Aiden performed his song on the stage. All in all, it took almost two days for the shooting of the finale to complete before they wrapped up another season of the show.
***
On 3rd August, Aiden and Wade were sitting in a cafe, talking about things while keeping an eye on their phones.
Today was the day the finale of X-Star was going to be released.
"How do you think the response is going to be?" Aiden asked, sipping on his coffee.
"It's the finale, so obviously a lot of people are excited. I saw a lot of discussions about it on internet forums. People love to discuss who's going to be the winner."
"I'm not talking about that. The ratings? Do you think they are going to surpass last year?"
Wade put a hand on his chin and thought about it. He had kept an eye on the response the show had gotten last year, so he knew how hard it was.
"It's not impossible but it's very close to that. You need a great viewer response initially to pull in more audience as the show goes on. A lot of people are going to watch it, the problem would be to keep them glued to their seats."
In grand finales of reality shows, many would just start watching it at the last moment to know who the winner is. It was also because of this reason the winner reveal segment gets peak viewership.
"They called other celebs as guests for that." Aiden said, thinking of his meeting with the other celebs that were present there. Just some singers and rappers.
"I don't think you should be too worried. Your performance was pretty good. Just wait and watch how people take it. Anyway, 'Lost in the Sky' is already closing in on 50 million views on MeTube."
Wade said with a smirk.
"Yeah, it's really getting a lot of love. A lot of them are also buying the hardcopy of the single." Aiden smiled. "No other song of mine has this sort of reception."
Omar had already made deals with a music distribution company about 'Lost in the Sky' and they have already started producing it and promoting the single.
"Your value is rising, so your songs are performing according to it." Wade said then suddenly, hesitated a bit before changing the topic. "Anyway, I got something for you."
"What?"
"Another audition."
"Another movie?"
"No, a TV show. I think it's good to have a mix of both movies and acting."
Aiden widened his eyes hearing that. In Hollywood, TV actors are generally seen less than movie actors and there was a big pay gap in their salaries.
In the 90s, any established movie actor won't even think about starring in a TV series as it was thought that it's going down a level.
It was true to some extent but the discrimination was very blatant.
It was only later on that more famous movie actors started taking roles in TV series and the gap between movie and TV industry lessened.
Nowadays, it was not uncommon to see a big movie actor coming out with a TV series. Though, there are still actors who just focus on movies or TV and won't try to get outside their comfort zone.
"What type of TV series? Is it a new series? Another main role?"
Aiden opened his mouth, having all sorts of questions in his mind. He was very curious about the audition Wade suddenly brought up.
"It's a sitcom. Not really a main role."
"Oh, so a side character?"
"No, they just want an actor to play a character for some episodes. I don't think they plan to bring him up later."
Wade said and Aiden nodded his head, satisfied. If it was going to be a role that would be very long, Aiden would not have been a lot interested.
After all, he didn't want to be bound by a role for several years.
This was something that a lot of TV actors would suffer from. A TV series will go for a lot of seasons, making actors bound to one role, making them unable to try other opportunities and get stuck to one role.
Many famous actors will leave shows because of this.
It has its own advantages and disadvantages but at this stage of his career, Aiden wanted to focus more on doing different roles.
"I will tell you more about the whole thing tomorrow." Wade said, picking up his phone which had suddenly started buzzing. "X-Star finale is starting."
***
On one of the famous celebrity online forums that was simply called 'Gossip sub', a person made a post titled, "Is anyone watching the grand finale of X-Star?".
As soon as the post was made, over 2000 comments were made on it, discussing their favourite contestants and how the episode was going on.
But compared to last year, a lot of people said that there wasn't a lot of spark in this year's finale.
All that changed when Aiden's performance came.
...
