The Xfactor is an American reality television music competition created by Simon Cowell and produced by FremantleMedia North America and SYCOtv, a partnership between Sony Music Entertainment and Cowell, on Fox. Predicated on the UK series, and an accession to the The X Factor franchise, new singing ability, drawn out of auditions that are people is found by the series, and so they compete against one another for votes. The winner is decided by the series's viewers via telephone, Web, and SMS text voting, and can be awarded a recording contract with Cowell's record label Syco Music, worth $5 million in seasons one and two, and $1 million per year. The winners were Melanie Amaro in season 1 and Tate Stevens in season 2. The US adaptation of this series started broadcasting on September 21, 2011, and it has aired a year from September through December The series uses a board of judges that review that the contestants' performances. Each contestant is delegated to at least one of four different categories. The group acts are one category and the others are based on sex or age. As an example that the categories are groups, boys, girls, and over-25-year-olds. Each judge is assigned to 1 of the categories,and acts as mentor to the contestants in his or her category, helping decide song choices, styling, while estimating contestants from the other types after all and staging of those performances. They contend together to attempt to receive one of the contestants in their category to win your competition, hence making them the most estimate that is winning.