Their bottom line is to chase the voting demographic, ie. Those that are easily parted with their money.

Is that the underclass and the young? ie. the same demographic which are easier to exploit by the likes of Hopkins and Davidson, and the Daily Mail ?

On a rational level I totally agree with your last line. That's why I'm trying to understand why I'm still emotionally attached.

I am in a peculiar position because I am not watching BB at all these days, but am still genuinely interested in it as a phenomenon, so I keep tabs on the forum to get a feel for each series.

It really does seem to me to have got uglier and uglier as a programme under Channel 5's management. Of course we have always had nasty individuals (perhaps not in BB1 and 2) and angry rows, bitching, even a couple of big blow-ups, but on the whole we were watching a fair process of people learning, or not learning, to get along together and deal with the stresses that came with the programme. It was a game with rules; BB might keep introducing little twists, but basically they allowed it to play itself out. If a 'big character' got evicted, that was just how the cards fell. And the winners really were people perceived as nice guys, so there was a kind of redemptive theme to it, even though my actual favourite hardly ever won.

I knew my days as a BB watcher were numbered during BB14, even though I did watch the next CBB. There was something really childish and quite brutal about the way the series was run. They had, for example, Wolfy: an insecure, immature, slightly silly and naive 20 year old, and they REALLY went the extra mile to make her feel horrible and look ridiculous. In what world is it ok to tell a 20 year old girl that she has been voted the dirtiest and least attractive housemate? And all the stuff piled on Hazel - special public votes for nasty things for Hazel to do! WhatEVER? And that was the series when they just seemed to go all out for turning everything into a conflict. There were endless 'special' tasks for housemates they wanted to see fighting, all designed to encourage spite and jealousy. The tasks for the non-fighters were pitiably feeble and ersatz.

Even though I thought BB13 was relatively reasonable for most of the time, the writing was on the wall during the white room stunt. They leaked to the Star that £25,000 of the prize money would go to someone in a task, and the response was uniformly extremely hostile. So they manoevred the task so that only unpopular housemates could win the money, and doubled it. It was like spitting in the face of the viewers: you could almost hear them crowing, "we can do anything we like, and you can't stop us."

Ditto in BB15, and giving a housemate a permanent immunity. Obviously they knew that no one likes permanent immunities: they pretty well ruin the series as a game. But they relied on the attraction of lots of fighting and spite to keep people watching. It is hard to remember that in the old days we might watch for a week and see nothing more thrilling than people working on a long task and having a row about the shopping that was sorted out next morning. And that was the BB I liked.

It was always a show with an element of rejection, yes. But on the whole, people did seem to deal with that side of it well, right back to BB1's group singing of 'It's only a Game" at every eviction. But BB seemed to make the conscious decision to make things much harsher by making no attempt to rein in the booing. From no booing at all we moved to booing of people seen as particularly villainous, and finally booing for no discernable reason at all. And twitter has changed the game. BB is attractive to insecure people, who are particularly poorly equipped for the combination of fawning admiration and vicious spite that can greet them outside the house. The celebs are maybe better prepared for this, as some of them have big twitter accounts anyway, but CBB can still be a huge knock. I can guarantee that Linda Nolan, say, did not expect her entire three weeks to be reduced to 'Linda talks about Jim'; something the other housemates had clearly not even noticed until the dog kennel task towards the end.

Yes, an odd feeling has grown up that BB and the viewers are mutually at war. When Jasmine chose the wrong two people for immunity last year, there was absolute glee that BB's schemes had been thwarted. Which when you think about it is rather odd. We don't watch I'm a Celebrity in the hope that Ant and Dec will look shocked and crestfallen.


It is true that they seem to enjoy playing with fire. The amount of alcohol in the house has increased over the years to a bizarre extent; in the early series, where alcohol had to come out of the shopping list, and the shopping had to be earned, people might go for a couple of weeks with no alcohol at all. And there is constant stirring, allowing people to see other people talking about them behind their backs, actively encouraging them to argue and bitch all the time. With the Daley/ Hazel thing they were very, very close to the edge. And they KNEW it before they were even in the room together; they saw a blind drunk, toweringly angry man and thought it appropriate to lock him in a bedroom with a woman who had also been drinking heavily in the hope that 'sparks' might fly.

Are all the ' mores' of C/BB derived from humans' deepest, darkest primal fears?:

Humiliation - in front of others, especially those who look up to us and our 'enemies.'

Having to be nice to others we don't like and/or when we know they don't really like us.

Being reduced to sub- human/animal level, by the tasks just in order to entertain/secure votes. Its not much different to performing seals being rewarded with fish.

Not having a single person who can really be trusted. So creating maximum insecurity.

The overall packaging does seem pretty sadistic to me !

to be fair the thing i like most about BB is making jokes about how horrendous people like Steven Goode are. Or Chris *mint banter*. They are comedy gold.

Yes, the forum is usually pretty good at finding humour wherever possible.

The pickings have been somewhat slim this time, as the raw material has less to give.

Bunch of trolls, the posters above this.

That's a very unnecessarily inflammatory post.

I used to perceive you as one of the funniest, laid back, and sharpest posters on this forum.

What's happened to you?

I was being silly.

That's allowed - but no more than once mind.

Now give us some YNM speciality input onto this thread.

*waits in eager anticipation.*

Aww, I'm sorry, I can't, I was drunk and now I'm not, and it's a horrid show now and Helen winning made it horrider and we shouldn't encourage it by watching any more. I mean Katie Hopkins, ffs. The Jungle is still a platform where a much larger viewing public ultimately vote for the purest at heart. Big Brother is an old habit gone bad. And in line with that, this place is almost impossible to take nowadays too. I'm taking each day as it comes and have successfully stopped watching BOTS for starters. I can't think of a way to say all this with nipple tassels on.

What are you counting as "how they got there"? Do you mean when Emma and Michelle were in the secret room? There wasn't much of a "how they got there" before the fight once E&M came back.

Anyway, I think it goes back instead to fear of "another BB4". The producers don't dare let things develop naturally, or stop trying to affect which HMs stay and which go, or even stop having launch night twists, because they fear above all else that viewers will find it dull. I also think they've gotten into a vicious cycle in which they've pushed up the drama so that the audience then expects more, and then they don't dare push it less.

It also changes the audience into one that likes the continual "drama". People who don't like what a show is like, or who don't like the way it's heading, stop watching, or watch less; and people who like it start watching, or watch more. Not everyone in those categories, but enough to change the composition of the audience.

Before "Hopkins" started giving Perez a taste of his own medicine (which she then took too far), and before "isolation" became such an issue, Perez was worse. He was certainly worse than a mere "irritant" or "fooling around". Even now, it's questionable that she winds him up more than he winds up her.

Anyway, I agree that it's largely because of the HMs they pick -- though if the HMs don't clash, BB tends to contrive a situation in which they do (hence such things as the repeated use of secret rooms) -- BUT they are not going to change the type of HMs they pick if the ratings seem good. And raising the prize to £150,000 for non-celeb BB will make things even worse, imo, because it will attract more people who are keen to get the money and don't have scruples about how they do it.

I've been having similar thoughts (as in my comment about a vicious cycle and a changing audience above.)

But I'm not sure how much is due to targeting a different demographic. One of BB's "selling points" from a broadcaster's or advertiser's POV has always been that it was a relatively good way to reach "younger" viewers.


BB now contrives to keep some of them in, but also there's always seemed to be many viewers (at least out of those who comment in forums) who wanted to keep "big characters" in, who disliked "fence-sitting", "getalong", "deadwood", or "wallpaper" HMs and who wanted the voting system to be changed to voting-to-save. Unfortunately, many of the big characters are quite unpleasant or in some other way make the show worse for many other viewers. However, the "keep the big characters" way of thinking has grown stronger over the years and seems to be increasingly the view of BB itself since the move to C5.


I think the issue of viewers being complicit, and BB even treating bullying as entertainment, goes well back into the C4 years. Some people have given up on the show because of it. But there are also ways to make it seem ok, such as the idea the HMs "knew what they were getting into" that used to be quite popular.

However, I think some things have become worse. I think it's questionable how often in the past the "really nasty characters" were "shown the door before they got anywhere near the final", but at least it seemed to happen more often than it does now.

When do you think there was a fair process, allowed to play itself out? I think maybe BBs 1 and 2. BB3 seemed to have BB shaping some things re Jade. BB4 had the Africa swap. In BB5, the HMs only nominated 5 times and one of them was for a fake eviction.


This is one of the times when I agree with most of what you've said in a post, but I don't think it's right to treat a story in the Star as giving us the truth, so that any differences must have been changes. Your belief that "they manoevred the task so that only unpopular housemates could win the money" is also based on something like that, though it may have been a story on the BB web site rather than an article in the Star. In any case, the amount of the prize in the actual task wasn't set at 50k; it depended on when the button was pressed.

However, I think it was a very ill-advised task after what had happened earlier in the series.

This is my favourite post of the week.

They certainly seem to have got a lot more shameless about keeping the focus on their 'stars', and making sure they don't leave early. In Rylan's CBB it was obvious that Speidi would have been out second if nominations and evictions had been played straight, so quite a lot of tricksy shuffling was done to make sure that couldn't happen.

In this CBB, Ch 5 were making a big thing about having got Katie Hopkins - she was apparently paid a lot more than the others, and was promoted as the big draw. But again, she almost certainly has more dislikers than likers. I remember looking at the line-up and KNOWING that she would never be subjected to a vote to evict or a one-to-one vote (which can act very like a vote to evict). The same is probably true of Perez, though I didn't know that in advance. You can see, for example, that under the 'old' system, the first eviction would have been between Ken and Perez. It was not. The third eviction would have been between Perez, Nadia and Katie Hopkins. It was not. If BB8 had been run by Ch 5, Charley would have been there until the last night, and I would have put a brick through the screen.

Have you also fallen off the wagon? I'm climbing right back on when this finishes.

Sorry just read another post of yours above. Good for you.

I much prefer vote to evict, but whatever it is BB manipulate now for their chosen controversial central characters, surely. Was the summer BB vote to evict?I'm puzzled about the manipulation coming up tomorrow night.
As someone said above BB is a good habit gone bad. The brief time and the central theme they choose because they can now, is mainly misery and conflict with most of the reality and fun missing.

Would "played straight" in that case have to include vote to evict?

They were up 3 times (out of 4) and didn't go. However, it was vote to save.


I don't agree about what would have happened under the old system, and since you haven't been watching this CBB, you're not really in a good position to say. (The forum, especially as it is by now, would not be a very good substitute for watching.)

Yes, it was. BB seems to have settled on using to-save for the celeb version and to-evict for the other.

BB5 seemed to take ages to get going because of the cancelled eviction and the bed-sit twist, but once it did, it was recognisably back to nominations/ public vote; and I always thought that nominations/ public vote was a brilliant system, hard to 'play' and hard to predict.

And re. Speidi, they were an expensive acquisition for Ch 5 and already signed to do some work for them. There was no way they wanted them out straight away. They were safe in week one because Paula was such a nutter, but NO ONE liked them after that week; they would 100% have been nominated, and if only two had been up, they would have been out. After that, since it was vote to save, all they had to do was make sure there were always plenty of people in the mix. Hence allowing them to put up two people for automatic eviction in the third eviction (specifying that they had to be 'boring', ie at particular risk in a vote to save), then having an all-housemates eviction vote.

Not so. Only one week was lost because of the cancelled eviction in bb5. The first week, HMs nominated about suitcases; the second week it was for a fake eviction; the third week was skipped because of fight night, and then 2 of the 5 weeks after that (and before the final week) did not have nominations. Week 7 had the Boot Camp task instead; and in Week 9, BB put everyone up. In addition, Week 5 had the "Judas kiss".


That's an argument about BB's motives, not that Speidi would have gone. I'm inclined to agree about the motives.


They were up almost ever week. BB has never required that only two be up, and (except for the all-up on day 14) they were up in small enough groups so that they could have been got out.

I take your point that they were helped by twists, but my question was whether your "played straight" would have to include vote to evict; and it seems that the answer is "yes".

(BTW, it doesn't necessarily make a HM safer when more are up in a vote to save.)