That being the first season of BBUK I watched I found it pretty good. It made a nice change from having over the top drama all the time.
The problem is now that everyone knows what to expect and they go in for quick fame and Instagram followers. So the show will never be the same. Maybe if they shook it up a bit and used the narcissistic, vain, desperate attempts to their favour it could work. Though fundamentally the voting is the best part but the colluding is not. Maybe have the audience put 3 people up and the house evict one? Or do they already do that? I dont watch the international versions.
1 Like
It shouldnât be up to the house to evict. The US does that and itâs horrible. It basically turns it into Survivor in a house and all the people popular with the public are eliminated early. They tried that anyway in the horrible season 8 on Ten and it didnât work out well and they reverted back to the public vote.
2 Likes
You have really missed out. Iâve seen every season for the last 4-5 years (2 per year) and itâs usually full of drama and craziness. The only person in the recent season that came close to that was Indie who left first. I feel like Kim Woodburn 2 seasons ago set the bar for the level of drama and arguments you can have in the house and since then nothing has been able to come close to it. The theme for the next season is meant to cast people who have had controversies in the media so Iâm hopeful it will be a much better season.
Yeah US Big Brother is a completely different show. My boyfriend watches it so I see some snippets here and there and it seems to have become very gimmicky as well with all these new power apps and advantages (a bit like Survivor last season which became overrun with advantages). I also find US Big Brother very childish, as in the themes and type of challenges they do can be a bit silly like they are trying to appeal to a much younger audience. The thing that annoys me most about US Big Brother though is in the confessionals itâs always like they are yelling. Clearly they are told to speak like that and it does my head it.
3 Likes
Mainly because not enough people are interested in Big Brother. To justify the cost involved Big Brother would have to rate more than 500,000 viewers each day anyway, which wouldnât happen when you have tentpole shows struggling.
Filled with nobodies has never stopped with CBB UK rating very well. UK viewers like Big Brother and it has an audience over there. What translates well overseas doesnât always work here. Australia just grew out of Big Brother helped by many bungled seasons with silly gimmicks and awful casting.
Though the networks have shown they have no intention of live feeds. Our society is vastly different too with the #metoo campaign and generally being more socially conscious. The networks certainly donât want to be open up to even more legal scrutiny where they canât control the contestants. I think Belindagate & Turkey Slap would have far more significant ramifications today than it did back then.
3 Likes
Actually BB is not rating well in the UK anymore which is why itâs in danger of being cancelled after this year and also like I said BB UK has the same format as us, the US format is vastly different and in my opinion doesnât resemble Big Brother at all. I still think it can work here again and that there is an audience for it.
Yeah I heard this could be the last Celeb Big Brother. I always wondered how it lasted so long to be honest given how much they pay some of the âcelebsâ to go on there when it is essentially a late night show (I think it airs after 10pm).
Well Sav that surely has to tell you something, the format has had its day when even the UK version is failing.
Itâs a bit hard to compare BBUK, with 18 regular seasons & 21 Celebrity seasons over 18 years, to BBAU, with 11 regular seasons and 1 celebrity season over 13 years (with large gaps in the air time).
Nine didnât treat the series very well, especially in the last season. A TEN version of BBAU in this day and age, with live streaming on Ten All Access, extra shows on ELEVEN, Uncut, Uplate, a huge social media presence etc⌠would surely get eyeballs watching.
If Nine can make Love Island work, TEN can make BBAU work.
8 Likes
Ditto
1 Like
The next Celeb BB season will be the 40th Big Brother Season in the UK. If anything that shows the strength of the format. If a show is only starting to fail after 40 seasons⌠thatâs pretty impressive.
1 Like
I am grateful this hasnât happened in Australia. Thatâs beyond excessive and completely unnecessary IMO
1 Like
They have 2 celeb Big Brother seasons per year and 1 normal season. The celeb seasons only go for about 4 weeks each which is a good length IMO.
Yes. Australians whinge here about calibre of celebrities on shows that have one season though. Imagine what grade weâd be getting if we ran that many editions here.
They are mostly very low grade celebs on UK Celeb BB anyway but they also get a lot of older people who have had pretty big careers but close to retirement so do this for an easy buck. So itâs good to have a bit more age diversity in the house which weâve never really had here. That also makes it more entertaining as the young people who drink a lot (typically people from TOWIE, Geordie Shore, Ex on the beach etc) usually drive the older housemates crazy.
Big Brother works well as a late night show in the UK. It could do so here post 10pm.
1 Like
Yes it is some achievement, but if the viewers are petering out then I say the format is getting exhausted. Maybe there is over saturation.
Not really, most of the weekly challenges were copied from UK BB and most of the gimmicks were the same.
I like your enthusiasm and I donât want to rain on your parade but where would all the money come from from all those shows. Thatâs a huge commitment and really a huge gamble for Ten. Nine had more resources and still couldnât make it work.
Nine did make Love Island work, but Love Island is far different than Big Brother with different expectations and budgets. Love Island is cheaper, had lower expectations, worked on a multichannel whereas Big Brother would have to be on Ten and Love Islandâs ratings would not be acceptable for Big Brother.
Love Island was all about pretty people, romance and hookups. That didnât work for Big Brother. Love Island was also heavily edited so no boring bits or offensive content/people.
I do wonder though what it would take for people to give up on Aus BB. I can remember reading before the revival aired how much people were looking forward to it and howthey were certain it would be a hit, yet it was axed after two years and two average rated seasons and a dud.
Every fan says â Ten All Access, extra shows on ELEVEN, Uncut, Uplate, a huge social media presence etc⌠would surely get eyeballs watching.â yet the revival proved that wasnât the case and the networks canât/wonât devote the time needed to please hardcore fans.
The revival by Nine was a completely different show to the one on Ten. For one there was hardly any viewer interaction and they didnât utilise social media enough and didnât make the show truly feel like it was a 24/7 show.
Not to mention they heavily sanitized the show and tried to make it too family friendly. The show was also rating pretty well on Nine before the final season in 2014 where they shoved it in an 8:30 timeslot and then kept cutting and changing the schedule in response to ratings.
Also the editing on Nine was pretty shit with the show starting at night, changing to day and back to night again instead of presenting events in a chronological order like Ten did.
7 Likes
With the amount of chat going on this thread, anyone would think one of the commercial networks was reviving the series soon 
5 Likes
I watched it and it was pretty much the same. Yes there was less side shows like Uplate, Uncut and Friday Night games and an over reliance on the daily shows. But if you canât make most of the daily shows seem exciting then there wasnât much hope for anything else.
They did have that low budget Friday Night Game thing for a couple of weeks that was axed for poor ratings.
Though if you have a show too afraid to have an internet message board I canât see how they would be willing to have those shows and viewer interaction, especially on platforms like twitter that can be viperâs nest and no shortage of people to hate on contestants. Tully would have been even more hated.
Going the family friendly route was a mistake, but they had little room to go in any other direction. I donât think weâre ever going to get a pre 2006 Uncut. Thereâs way too many people that get offended over anything and the Australian tv market has gone even more conservative. Besides if you want to hear sex stories (God how Iâve tried to rid Karen losing her virginity in a field with a group of her friends out of my mind or her abortions) or see dick, muff or tits thatâs what Insta, porn and the net is for. Big Brother used to offer a chance to glimpse into someoneâs life, but when you can find a plethora of people on the net that does exactly the same thing, usually are more interesting too, then Big Brother loses its initial appeal.
As for the final season, I think it was obvious Nine wanted to get rid and deliberately self sabotaged so they could dump the show without a fuss after their initial contract. If the ratings were what Nine had wanted Iâm sure they would have spent the time on polishing the show like editing, but when your other massive reality show, The Block, was rating much higher, it wasnât a shock why Nine wanted to dump it.
1 Like
I am just saying if Ten revived the show instead of Nine, the show would have been much better and it would have possibly still been around today. But if it was ever going to get revived Alex Mavroidakis should not be involved. First he made Big Brother boring, then he made Iâm a Celebrity boring and finally Love Island was not even close to being as good as the UK version.
2 Likes