What was wrong with Big Brother?

• What was wrong with Big Brother?

BB had suffered from negative press on more than one occasion.  It never bothered us, the LF watchers, but it worried CH4.  As a consequence they decided to control more and show less.  We got more birdsong and less HMs.  They also decided to keep more back in case they needed it for their own HL shows.  We, the partners, were increasingly shortchanged.  People stopped watching as we felt that LF (which was the key differentiator for us all) was increasingly not telling the truth.
You could argue that the HM selection process was corrupted with increasingly wild characters being chosen - the sort of persons you would cross the street to avoid.  But leaving that aside the reason that people were drifting away was choice.  The world has more choices now.  Even Morecambe and Wise would not get 20 million now.  With a bit more honesty in the LF we (the hardened users) would come back every time.  And if we did enjoy it we would tell colleagues etc etc.
What was wrong?  Nothing that could not be fixed and nothing that was not already being fixed when Ch4 backed out.

Big Brother - the successful years

Earlier I offered these as the headings that I should think about:

• What was Big Brother?
• What was wrong with Big Brother
• What should be carried forward
• What should be dropped.
• The value and meaning of Social Media
• The changes to voting that will be introduced
• Whether Big Brother can survive
• The world view of Big Brother
• How to campaign successfully to ensure all stakeholders (us) have a say

I will start there then.
Big Brother was a groundbreaking concept.  Many different countries had their own.  It was Reality but mostly with a difference.  The Housemates would be treated like lab rats and would provide us with entertainment by their responses to the goading of BB.  We were offered the chance to participate on a couple of levels. 
We could watch and we could vote.  If we were fortunate we could go along and participate but for most of us it was the watching and voting.  Live Feed was invented (albeit with a 15 minute delay for censorship).  
The concept took off.  We could watch and listen.  We formed opinions and discussed them with colleagues.  The show was a huge success although there were many who thought it fairly infantile which it could be.
The contestants were chosen for their extrovert natures and we ended up feeling we knew them and either liked them or did not.
We were even given the choice of who to follow from 4 story lines for a while.  The series came and went but the constant of Live Feed made it an enjoyable experience for us. We watched in our millions (and I daresay we voted in millions too).  BB rang the changes but the show depends on an active and perhaps an informed audience which we enjoyed being.  Without us there is no show.

And I wandered lonely in a dark land, and I saw a vision of the future.  Standing before the vision was a grim spectre.

The spectre beckoned me and said: "My name is Reason, look at this future."

I looked and as far as I could see people were huddled over their machines and hand held devices.  They could not leave and dare not look up but they were not happy.
"Tell me why" I asked Reason.
Reason spoke:  "They are interacting", said the spectre.  "They may not look away for their next interaction will arrive and they might miss it and then they would become the souls who have lost their way".

I asked was it always like this.  Reason said; "Not always.  Once they could watch interactions at their own pace.  They could leave and come back as they chose.  They could watch on televisions and computers but the world was far slower then.  Now it has to be done Now.  There is no rest."

I asked the Reason why.  The spectre replied that "for the new pathways to be successful all must be enslaved and must give up their freedoms.  All must conform and have no opinions but those that are interacted to them. "

I asked Reason if this was The Future and the spectre replied: "it is A future, but it will be your future if you do not stand firm.  Ask for the reason, and if there is none refuse the pathways."


"Which pathway shall I choose then Reason?"  I asked.

Reason replied: "Unless you choose the path of Live Feed all of your futures will be as theirs.  And then it will all fade and you will have nothing."

Then I woke up and thought.  "Too fecking right."

I wrote this on Nasty Nick's blog yesterday:



Regardless of product placement dollars Nick, it wont have an audience with the current configuration. I have watched them all and it was Live Feed that made BB different and interesting. I doubt very much that the measly portion of extremely edited action doled out by Jeff Ford et al will give us any actual involvement and the show is doomed. That FB charade of advert infested clips about nothing at all are not enough to involve me and others. The youthful spotty audience they are apparently after will not stay even if they do arrive. They have made a massive mistake and they are not big enough to admit and rectify it. Farewell BB.

http://bigbrotherveteran.blogspot.com/2011/09/goodbye-cbb.html#comments

But I don't think we should give up this easily.  We have 9 weeks to save the show.  If CH5 used the resources they currently have spamming their own site on providing LF I think it could be very cost effective for them.

Big Brother Bullshit

I suppose that there are two ways of reacting to extremely poor decisions enthused about by Mr Jeff Ford in his attempts to reposition Big Brother in the 18-30 age group firmly embedded in the exciting new worlds of Social Media (well Facebook and Twitter principally, with a brief nod to the world of web stuff on the Ch5 'Community' site).

Firstly we can accept the way (he thinks) things are to be and get on enjoying the 40 minutes highlights doled out each day.
Secondly we can take arms against this particular sea of troubles and do a bit of opposing to enable him to see sense as his viewing figures go down the pan.
I am going to go for the second option.  I do that as a long time fan of Big Brother and out of a sense that he has made crass mistakes in his quest for market share, but with guidance he can do much better.

I don't imagine for a moment that I will get everything right because I am not a programming director.  I can imagine that JF has some skills because he is one of the few that survived the Ch5 takeover cull but my view is that he has either been poorly advised or he does not have a real understanding of what Big Brother really was.

I suppose the place to start is:

• What was Big Brother
• What was wrong with Big Brother
• What should be carried forward
• What should be dropped.
• The value and meaning of Social Media
• The changes to voting that will be introduced
• Whether Big Brother can survive
• The world view of Big Brother
• How to campaign successfully to ensure all stakeholders (us) have a say

More later: