Simon Who? Major Blow for Cowell's Netflix Show After Only 40 Contestants Turn up to Audition

Simon Cowell's search for the next big boy band, which will be documented in the upcoming Netflix show The Midas Touch, suffered a setback when only 40 contestants showed up to the first day of auditions in Liverpool on Saturday, RadarOnline.com has learned.

"They started arriving slowly from about 9am on Saturday but the biggest number in the queue never amounted to more than about 40," an observer told The Sun. "By early afternoon, the number arriving had virtually dried up and it was the same story on the Sunday audition."

"The amount of railings they put up suggested they were expecting hundreds or thousands of people to arrive and pack out the queues but they had a fraction of those kinds of numbers," the source added.

Cowell, who famously put One Direction together on The X Factor in 2010, had hoped to replicate that success with his new competition series. But the first two rounds of auditions in Newcastle last week were cancelled due to "travel schedule" issues, and he has admitted to nervousness about the project.

The music mogul told Hello! that his latest venture is "one of the scariest things I've ever done because I have no safety net. I used to do this 25 years ago, before social media, so now, everyone is in their bedrooms. Are they going to audition? I hope so."

"These auditions will not look like The X Factor in the slightest — no shiny desks, big productions or celebrity guests. It will be incredibly stripped back," an insider told The Mirror. "Simon has amassed a team of real experts — songwriters, producers and A&R people - who he really trusts. Together they’ll be chatting to the talent and trying to work out who should go through."

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As RadarOnline.com previously reported, One Direction's Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan recently unfollowed Cowell on Instagram after he revealed that his biggest regret from managing the boy band was not owning their name.

"I can be very naive at times, and that was me being very, very naive. So next time that'll be part of the deal. I have to own the name," he said on Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast last month. "They can still make most of the money, but I need to own the name."

In the same interview, Cowell discussed launching The Midas Touch. "I'm doing it because right now, there isn't, I don't think, a band who has been as good as One Direction since One Direction," he explained. Auditions will continue in Dublin and London throughout the summer.