Voting for a change on BB

I am indebted to http://www.bigbrotherxtra.co.uk/?p=2639  for the following:

"Some 1.5 million votes were cast during nine weeks of Big Brother, 47 per cent of which were through the Big Brother Facebook app.

Channel 5 received around 500,000 votes for Celebrity Big Brother through its telephone services.

Big Brother contributed to a 25 per cent boost in Channel 5′s evening audience while it was on air.

Nick Bampton, the commercial sales director at Channel 5, said: “We took a risk in changing the voting mechanism. Integrating Facebook is a UK first and we’re pleased it has generated a substantial uplift in votes cast.” **"

CBB is only of passing interest.  500,000 votes at 36pence = £180,000 for 3 weeks voting (although the take for C5 may well be a bit less).  BB is a bit more interesting to conspiracy theorists though.

• BB ran for 9 weeks during which time there were 15 housemates (2 of whom walked out).

• 12 were voted out (8 on a weekly vote and 4 on the last night) leaving Aaron the worthy or unworthy winner depending on which camp you belonged to.  The votes were reopened after each eviction on Final night and after the mid week eviction in week 9.

• Viewer numbers were normally below 2 million and generally at 1 million or less.

• Effectively then, viewers and FB voters got to vote for 12 evictions.  They are never going to release the total numbers cast per eviction so I will assume that they were constant.

• Figures for phone votes for the whole series (53% of 1.5 million) = 795000

• Figures for FB votes for the whole series (47% of 1.5 million) =705000

• The total money spent by viewers and FB voters was probably as low as:
  Phone £286200 (795000 x £0.36) + FB  £49350 (705000 x £0.07) (the lowest cost of FB votes was 10 cents or 7p)

Gives a grand total of £335,550, although not all that cash was going C5's way.

You could of course block vote FB credits to the total of 500 per week. Interestingly enough, that total of FB votes (705k) could be achieved by only 1410 bloke votes of the maximum permitted per week. Also of interest is the fact that FB votes brought in about 1 sixth of the vote revenue.

If the votes were spread evenly across all 12 evictions (unlikely, but we have to make a few assumptions if they won't tell us anything), then each eviction received (1.5 million/12 = 125,000) votes of which 66,250 were on the phone and 58,750 were on FB.

Try this for a conspiracy imagination:

Imagine that it was a four way eviction like the one when Harry (33/1) got evicted. Imagine also that it is fairly neck and neck so that each nominated housemate has exactly the same number of votes. Perhaps the total votes cast so far by 5pm Friday evening was 100,000 so each of them had 25000 votes each.  How much would have to be spent to get Harry out the door?
Well, it was vote to save so to get to the average vote of 125,000 another 25000 votes would have to be cast for the other 3 contestants which in FB terms is 50 Block FB votes delivered by 50 different accounts.  Total cost to the FB block voters (whoever they may be) is only £1400.

If you were a gambler attracted by the 33 to 1 odds on Harry being evicted you would only have to wager £42.42 to recoup that outlay if he was evicted.

Of course, you would need to know that the voting numbers were so low that you could 'invest' in FB block votes to the extent that you could change the outcome.  Perhaps you would need someone who had access to the voting totals?

The only really unanswered question in this for me is why are C5 persisting with this block vote, low cost, low profit option? It leaves them open to all sorts of conspiracy theorists like me.  And if it isn't a dark conspiracy then it does have the faint whiff of incompetence - rather like the whole series.

** It is difficult to judge where Nick Bampton gets his confidence in FB voting from.  It registered about 700k votes but it is hard to judge what impact that had on phone voting.

Open letter to C5 from Twitter poster @InBigBother aka @MD1500

Dear Channel 5.

I wish to complain about Aaron's disgusting treatment on Big Brother and Big Brother's Bit On The Side. Despite your best efforts to the contrary, the public spent time and money watching him, supporting him and voting him to win. To see him evicted to a chorus of boos and subjected to Brian's harsh questioning was a low moment for the series.

If that wasn't bad enough, Aaron then appeared on Bit On The Side only to be asked truly vile questions by the likes of Pete Burns. Not a single person congratulated him on his win, while Emma did her best to try and swindle him out of another £10,000. I find this completely unacceptable.

Throughout this year, the Big Brother producers seemed to be fighting against the audience at every turn - you denied us Live Feed - an essential part of Big Brother, and filled the house with vapid Agency wannabees in a misguided attempt to turn the show into a scripted reality Geordie Shore clone.

This year, the rulebook has completely gone out of the window. Housemates were rewarded with food whether they failed the shopping task or not - giving them zero incentive to complete them. Meanwhile, Katie Price was allowed to enter and mingle with the housemates, completely violating the no contact with the outside world rule.

Even when Aaron consistently topped the online polls and survived evictions on four different occasions, the programme makers still insisted on portraying him as an evil game playing super-villain while lauding "genuine" housemates that defecate into kitchen appliances.

The whole show has left a very bitter taste in the mouth this year and the producers clearly have no idea of what makes a show like Big Brother work. You owe Aaron and the audience an apology. Please pull your collective heads out of the sand and give the viewers what they want next year.

Thanks.

In Big Bother

@InBigBother In your television

Talking about trashy TV and lamenting the loss of BB Live Feed. 

The non geeky account of @MD1500

Big Brother ends and the battle continues

Mission Statement:

I will continue the battle for Live Feed even though the show has finished (in what may be best described as an unusual manner.) Perhaps a fitting end to a shabby version of something that was once far, far better.
It started with falsehoods from C5 about what they would offer and descended into acrimony and mutual suspicion as they attempted to stifle all dissent.  The manipulation of all the highlight shows was apparent and served only to annoy the voters.  Aaron was the winner.  He had a large fan base and an equally large and vociferous opposition.

As long as I can I will chase them and harangue them and point out their failings to anyone who will listen.

There have been some good recent articles about BB. 

My first choice is from Kit Marsters.

Kit Marsters at the Huffy Post - Big Brother On Channel 5 - Does It Have A Future?

My second choice is from a fan site.

BBSpy Big Brother 2011 in review

After a night's reflection it seems likely that this was not the result that Channel 5 BB wanted or planned for. It seems that BB did not want him to win but would have preferred one of the two young ladies who had already shown a fair deal of their specific 'talents' in other activities on the web.  Failing a girl win they might have liked Jay to be the face of Ibiza themed BB going forward.  Certainly not metrosexual Aaron.  His ability to think and speak was probably not the asset they wanted as their brand leader. They showed him as badly as they could all the way through.  If he had sought solace by shitting in the freezer it surely would have been a special Highlights show all of its own.

They sought control of everything all the way through and in the end they could not control the combined power of the social media, block votes, fan groups (& gamblers attracted by a nice pay day.)

It is really ironic that the very activity that they thought would help them flog their shabby product turned round and bit them. I take heart from their discomfort.  Perhaps now they see that control and rent-a-mob is not how BB worked and should work.   BB has always been about viewer participation; no viewers, no show C5.