Options
Was "water cooler tv" always a myth?
Veri
Posts: 96,996 Forum Member
✭✭✭
BB used to be called "water cooler tv", and there have been quite a few claims that there werre "water cooler moments". But even back when BB was relatively popular (BBs 1 - 7), I hardly ever heard any talk about it anywhere, except in online forums devoted to the show.
In today's Guardian, there's a comment about Gogglebox saying:
I have never -- and I do mean never -- heard anyone discuss that, not near water-coolers, and not anywhere else either.
(I suppose it's possible it was mentioned in passing in some forum comments here that I've forgotten, but that still wouldn't be heard.)
Of course, I may be unusual there, along with the people I know or even overhear, but I don't think we can be all that unusual since Gogglebox is a show that over 90% of the population doesn't watch. And BB didn't do all that much better, even during the BB 1-7 period. (It might sometimes be only 80-something % that didn't watch it, but it was often over 90% even for BB.) People can talk about a show they hadn't watched, but most of the time, it would require at least one viewer who wanted to talk about it to get a next-day water-cooler conversation going, and there must have been many workplace groupings in which no one had watched the night before, or where no one who'd watched brought it up.
There's also an echo in the quote above of the old claim that BB HMs were a "cross-section". That seems to be a myth as well.
In today's Guardian, there's a comment about Gogglebox saying:
Its casting is so astute in terms of age, gender, race, wealth, education and sexuality that it does seem to cover British society fairly thoroughly. There's someone for everyone; you can barely go near a watercooler without hearing people discuss their favourites ..."
I have never -- and I do mean never -- heard anyone discuss that, not near water-coolers, and not anywhere else either.
(I suppose it's possible it was mentioned in passing in some forum comments here that I've forgotten, but that still wouldn't be heard.)
Of course, I may be unusual there, along with the people I know or even overhear, but I don't think we can be all that unusual since Gogglebox is a show that over 90% of the population doesn't watch. And BB didn't do all that much better, even during the BB 1-7 period. (It might sometimes be only 80-something % that didn't watch it, but it was often over 90% even for BB.) People can talk about a show they hadn't watched, but most of the time, it would require at least one viewer who wanted to talk about it to get a next-day water-cooler conversation going, and there must have been many workplace groupings in which no one had watched the night before, or where no one who'd watched brought it up.
There's also an echo in the quote above of the old claim that BB HMs were a "cross-section". That seems to be a myth as well.
0
Comments
I still hear it occasionally now but it's generally from the same few people who sit just across the office from me. I've never heard a conversation about goggle box though......
In the peak years everyone really was talking about it - at work on lunch everyone would sit around and talk about Big Brother, and I remember being in a rehearsal for a play on a Sunday during BB5, and there was a rumour that someone new had gone into the house (Becci) and we were all texting our families to find out (due to the lack of social media at the time!)
It really was a different beast, in some ways its bizzare to compare recent BB's to the powerhouse that it used to be from 2000-2006
Do you think it can ever get back to being that?
I know you didn't ask me, but definitely not. Channel 5 is deemed the lowest of the low for the terrestrial channels, that alone will not attract people. Big Brother has had it's day, if we look at it from a business/product point of view, it's definitely in it's decline period with lower ratings every year (for the civilian version) and I fully expect by the end of the current contract with Big Brother, the civilian series will be achieving 800k-1 million a night.
Do you think it's Channel 5 that is the issue? Not that I disagree with you - I ask people if they watch Big Brother and they say, 'Not since it moved to Channel 5'. I ask why that in itself puts them off, and they normally aren't really sure. The other thing I often get is, 'I only watch the celebrity ones.' I've never watched those - I don't see why they are more engaging than the ordinary ones.
Does it actually get lower ratings every year? I know it has done of late, but I'm sure I heard that BB14 had more ratings than both BB12 and BB13, before dropping again for BB15. Personally I think that BB12 and BB14 had good points and bad points, but BB13 was really enjoyable (my personal favourite including the C4 series, though for various reasons I'm biased), and BB15 was simply awful. I'm happy to give BB16 a clean slate, and will do for each new series no matter how bad it gets, because I think the format is so awesome that there will always be a chance to improve it.
I don't actually disagree with you entirely, I just feel that the celeb version seems to do quite well and there have been elements of Channel 5's version that have seemed quite popular. I feel like re-branding it and marketing it in a different way may make a difference, and it may also help to take a break for a few years. I never had a problem with C5 doing it, but even before it started I said they were bringing it back too early. People had finished that era in their lives after C4 stopped - I thought if they brought it back, they could make it successful if they made the right decisions with it. Think about it, if there had been no Big Brother since 2010, and this year they announced BB12, and did loads of marketing, I think you'd get quite a few tuning in, even if it was on C5.
Why does the celebrity series do so much better? I would always imagine that a spin-off will be destined not to do as well as the original. No one would ever have expected Young Apprentice to get more ratings than The Apprentice, for instance (I personally thought that the sister show for younger competitors was far superior, but that is just my opinion and I would have been surprised if it had done better.) Is it just marketing, or what? I don't watch the celebrity series, so I can't really judge it.
I suppose because it's shorter and you already know some of them in advance so it takes less time to get into. Fans tend to prefer the main series but viewers prefer the celebrity one.
In my experience, very few talked about it even during the peak years (except in online forums about the show). The most talk was probably during bb1.
I'm happy to accept that other people had a different experience, but the viewing figures are so much smaller than the UK population that I don't think it could have been very near everyone who was talking.
I think there was already a big decline in interest in BB before BB8. Like some other people, I'd put the big fall after bb7 or cbb 5.
I have probably known some people who watched BB, but I've always known more people who didn't. During bb7, some people at work who knew I watched BB would sometimes ask me about it and seemed interested by some of what I said was happening.
But that stopped after bb7 / cbb5, and from then on, I even noticed an increasing hostility to the show or to any talk about it.
Basically, BB used to reliably get 4.5.-4.7 million viewers as its series average. BBs 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7 were all in that range. BB3 was higher, and bb5 was higher too, but not as high as bb3. There was a big fall for bb8, bb9 was even lower, and bb10 was lower still. The number came back up a bit for bb11, but it was still lower than for bb9.
There was another fall with the move to C5. But on C5, BBs 12, 13, and 15 all had the same series average: 1.6 million. BB14 was higher, at 1.9.
Useful source.
Which elements of the C5 version do you think seemed quite popular, and did that popularity last? (There were some things, such as the montages, that were popular initially.) (Though the montages actually started on C4.)
Definitely agree with this. It was CBB5 that caused the hostility. I think there was definitely more interest sparked up during CBB13 and CBB15
We're in the age of Twitter, the internet's water cooler, if you will.
The recent celebrity series have reclaimed some of the old skool "you hear people talking about it at the bus stop" and press momentum — but given the sheer vintage of most CBB's on Channel 5, that's not surprising.
Could the civilian series ever get that dizzy again? Hmm. It's not just the outlets we use to express ourselves that changed but we as a collective audience have too.
Big Brother was water cooler TV during its vintage years because it was unique. Evictions were event TV. The finale felt like it mattered. Heck, our votes felt like it too
Today, we're too accustomed to formats, outcomes, voting patterns, too used to producer tricks (which were always there, but are now too visible) and tropes etc, to get as emotionally caught up as before. Even X-Factor isn't quite what it was.
That's just how things go
I hear BB mentioned in passing, but I dont think it has been a hot topic for a long time.
I do know that a lot of the people I follow decided to watch the last CBB when they hadn't watched one since it went onto C5, there were a lot who wanted to see Katie Hopkins say something terrible. The previous time there were a lot of Gary Busey fans watching who don't usually watch BB, or even BBUK.
The 3 shows I've heard people talking about in the supermarket are The Apprentice, Masterchef and The Great British Bake-Off.
The last thing that I remember making a real stir at work was Cameron's trip to Africa. The day after it, people were actually late to work because they stayed so long in the locker room talking about it.
The last time I ever saw BB broadcast in a public place was Nikki's first eviction in BB7, which I saw in a pub. Responses were loud and mixed; some people swore, and others cheered. I can't imagine that there are many pubs that would show BB these days. (I did see the BB11 final in a pub, come to think of it, but on a small tv next to the bar, and not really watched by anyone except me.) Apart from anything else, pub tv's seem only to show sports events these days.
Bake-off, yes, definitely. I have never seen it, and it always seems odd to hear groups of adults excitedly discussing yesterday's meringues.
And Strictly. People really seem to get emotionally involved in that. I've never seen that either. I'm practically a social outcast.