And yes, I did think of the title before I knew what I’d write about.
Now, I have a bit of a problem here. I agreed to blog about Big Brother, yet after not missing an episode in nine years, this year I find myself unable to watch the show. As I posted back in week one, messing with the eviction interview format was the final straw for me, and since then I’ve not watched a single highlights show.
Live Nominations
I did gave the live nominations a chance though, and although an unimaginative way to fill an extra show, it worked quite well. However, despite the positive feedback the coverage of nominations in the shows since is said to be worse than ever, despite nominations being the number one draw in bringing viewers to the highlights shows. The Tuesday shows have consistently been the highest rated for years.
Happy Birthday
I was happy too that for once Big Brother were really hyping themselves up for its early “tenth birthday”, and the return of ex-HMs did tempt me back into watching the show. However, I only watched those bits - and actually found myself physically unable to be treated like an imbecile by the narration of Marcus Bentley.
Most disappointing of all though was the live Friday shows, where despite them being promoted as special birthday editions the occasion was hardly even mentioned, and the only “unexpected surprises” on offer was the predictable entry of a bunch of new HMs - something which has happened a few weeks in every year since BB6.
To be fair the second show was put together rather well - but yet again Big Brother completely failed to promote itself. Davina should have been teasing viewers throughout the first that one of the newbies had a connection to one of the originals, whilst during the second the “twist” which was coming up at the end of the show wasn’t mentioned at all - until it happened.
Fix - in some peoples opinions!
So on Thursday Kenneth left, and in yet another bad decision made by the producers this year, this weeks’ eviction was axed. With ten more nominees, and the precedent being that unless there are just two nominees (and one quits), the eviction will go ahead, there was no reason at all for this eviction not to go ahead - and in having to refund all votes, rather than just those made for Kenneth (even though voters had got what they wanted - his departure), they made things even more difficult for themselves.
Also with Marcus second favourite to go before Kenneth’s departure,this inevitably led to accusations of “fix”, with a belief that producers are keen to keep the Marcus/Noirin non-relationship story going, something the (unconfirmed) rumours of Noirin’s ex entering the house only fuelled further.
Now, rumours of “fix” have been a part of Big Brother pretty much since the first eviction vote, but for me I never questioned the ethics of the producers until BB8, when they clearly appeared to be doing everything they could to keep Charley in, even though her dominance was damaging the show. Once she’d gone they seemed to do the same with Carole, for reasons nobody understands - and now it seems to be happening with Marcus too.
Three Strikes
The sudden desire to put housemates up for eviction for breaking the rules also fuels the “fix” rumours, which started with Kris, Sophie and Charlie being nominated by Big Brother when Marcus and Halfwit were up for eviction - something producers were aware of before they issued the punishments.
Big Brother 3 had the right idea with the simple and effective “three strikes and your out” punishment system, a system which meant dispensable housemates couldn’t be put up for eviction as a scapegoat for a minor rule breach in order to save a bigger character.
Logged Off!
I was going to spend this blog moaning about the official website - if you can call it that. It’s worse than ever this year, and only updated for around six hours a day - with half of those updates being completely unrelated to events in the house.
What makes it even more of an insult was that the website was used as the justification for axing the live feed, with complainers told they were refocussing efforts on uploading video clips. Trouble is, those clips are rarely from the house - most the clips this week have been pre-series audition footage.
Big Brother is a 24/7 concept, and it needs to be covered 24/7. Any events which happen after around 5pm don’t get reported until the next afternoon, whilst arguably the biggest breaking story of the series so far - Kenneth’s escape - wasn’t covered by the official site for around 5 hours.
Somehow in a stroke of luck Matt found himself awake at that hour on Thursday morning and covered the story in full here on bbspy, but could only do so due to it being within the E4 streaming hours.
So lucky for us, but whilst all this was unfolding the official webteam were all safely tucked up in their beds. They should have just ditched the website and kept the live feed - and then let the fansites and wider media do all the hard work.
After all, we’re better at it!
stick with bbspy!
