Big Brother gets its eviction notice

chris

It is a mark of how British television has changed that, back in 2000, the year's most serious on-screen scandal involved some names being written on bits of paper. "Nasty Nick" Bateman – whose pieces of paper they were – was evicted from the inaugural Big Brother house for trying to influence his fellow contestants' selections for eviction, and the programme became a sensation.

Since then, Big Brother has hit the headlines for slightly seedier reasons. Tabloids speculated as to which couple would be first to have sex on-screen. Jade Goody – in her first, non-"celebrity" stint in the house – got drunk and displayed rather too much of her anatomy. In the celebrity version of the show, George Galloway MP went down on all fours and pretended to be Rula Lenska's cat. Most infamously, Ofcom received more than 50,000 complaints when Goody, returning to the house as a celebrity in her own right, sparked a race row by bullying the Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

Yet as Big Brother has descended into vulgarity – and viewers have slumped into apathy, prompting Channel 4 to axe the show – it has been easy to forget what a groundbreaking programme it once was. That initial series pushed the technological boundaries, using dozens of cameras to create hundreds of hours of footage that could be streamed online, in jerky, grainy, pre-broadband fashion, or edited (and manipulated) ruthlessly for each evening's broadcast.

It was also an act of unparalleled bravado for Channel 4 to commit to nine weeks of nightly shows. If the programme had flopped, it would have been disastrous. But Big Brother was, of course, a hit, becoming a huge moneyspinner for broadcasters around the world – and spawning imitators with equal profligacy.

It's fashionable now to write off the entire genre of reality TV – the me-too shows, such as ITV's Love Island and Five's The Farm, are long gone. Actually, reality TV is far from dead, but, like any Darwinian success, it has had to mutate to survive. Fly-on-the-wall shows such as I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! are still success stories, but the biggest ratings winners are programmes that combine the ambition and viewer participation of Big Brother with the tried-and-tested formula of a talent show – in other words, Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent. Although they can claim no profound cultural meaning, these shows regularly draw in 10 million viewers or more, eclipsing the popularity even of Big Brother's early series – and proving that, even in this digital age, traditional television is far from moribund.

Britons' devotion to these newer hits reflects some of Big Brother's original strengths – the sense of an audience coming together for an event, and a national preoccupation with distracting trivia. But there is a difference. Much of Big Brother's appeal – particularly as it degenerated into a platform for oikish wannabes – was negative, based on voyeurism or Schadenfreude. The global embrace of the Scottish singer Susan Boyle this year, after an appearance on Britain's Got Talent, reflects a more positive outlook. Viewers root for their favourites to do well, rather than for unpopular contestants to do badly.

The celebrities created by talent shows – such as Leona Lewis, Paul Potts and Boyle herself – have exactly that: talent. No longer is fame divorced from merit, as it was in those grim years when Goody could command the cover of Heat magazine by changing the colour of her lipstick.

In the history of British popular culture, Big Brother will warrant a long chapter. But that culture will be all the better for Big Brother's absence. Like its irritating housemates, Big Brother was an amusing diversion – but now deserves its eviction.


Source:telegraph

Channel Hopper

'Yet as Big Brother has descended into vulgarity'


Excuse me, Endemol's idea of a genius crowd puller actually never crawled out of the gutter, despite the chances it could have been given.
Crowd pulling 'celebrities' and programmes that shoot them into stardom rely on pandering to the lowest common denominator - (courtesy of Lisa Simpson) - and the Big Brother capitalised on the great unwashed public spending their wages/ hard earned giro cheques in both txting the show , or posting on sites that opened their forums up, just to take on the dim light bulb comments.


It will not be missed, the last funeral organised by the punters is proof that there were no winners, with the exception of Cax Mlifford.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

overkill

So glad it's gone, they should have went though after the Shilpa Shetty rant

Topper

You will have to take a long vacation on a desert island then when it is on next year for the last time

War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left!

Formerly toppervte33h
whose six pack has turned into a keg

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