No! Good Housemates don't always impress straight away, sometimes it takes a while. Ashleigh from last year didn't make any impression at all until about Week 4, and she was one of the biggest characters from last year. Booting people out when they haven't lived up to expectations in the early days is a mistake.

True. There have been a couple over the years like that i guess.

The worst of piped up answers.

If the series was produced properly with decent housemates & tasks & some live feed, there is absolutely no reason to axe the civilian series. Channel 5 seem incapable of doing a great civilian series over the past 2 years though. Fantastic celebrity series produced though.

I think maybe if the producers took the time to actually listen to what fans want, they might actually be in with a chance of pulling a decent series out of the bag. Like I really don't understand how we went from BB13 / BB14 to this mess two years on.

This series started out pretty well, but obviously had a number of things going against it. I mean it's not going to help that you start the series early up against BGT and don't even really bother to advertise it. But things were bubbling along nicely enough. BB16 1.0 definetely seemed like the kind of series that would lend itself well to a live feed of some sort, whether it be full or at least partial scraps throughout the day.

But in stead the producser decided the reason it was waning was because it was "boring" to actually watch things unfold properly, which forgive me if I'm mistaken is the actual premise of BB. So then just started throwing everything at the series to see if it sticks.

We're now in BB16 3.0 and to say it's been a convuluted mess is an understatement. I know this cliche is thrown around a lot by people, but for once it really does feel like the show is now only BB in name only. Everything is centred round riling people up whether it be sticking in ex-housemates / awful loudmouths or making every task about exposing what people have said about eachother. This stuff no longer has an impact because it's been done so often it is tedious. The nomination process is pretty much non-existant now as well and we just get a hodge podge of random twists deciding who goes up each week with no logic to it.

It is pretty much like when Survivor implemented Redemption Island and completely botched the show for about 3 seasons. A once pretty consistently entertaining show (like even the worse seasons were still highly watchable) became a complete mess dominated by a horrible twist as well as returning players that took away from the focus of the actual new people. BB16 is the exact same thing and it just isn't working.

The producers need to figure out what they are doing because BB does still have potential to be great. But if they keep going in the direction they are going in I really don't think much steam is left in the show at all.

A dumb answer to a dumb question.

I pretty much agree with everything here.

I think that the big mistake that the producers are making is that they want to have high ratings straight away. People were asking for a more natural series, so they gave us a more natural series in the hope that it would get high ratings, and when it didn't within two weeks, they started panicking and throwing in the twists again.

At this stage, it isn't going to get high ratings. That is a fact. Viewers have been lost and can be regained, but not on an immediate basis. I'll give credit to them for the fact that to start off with they did actually seem to have taken on board viewers' comments, but it's the natural order of things that if something isn't seen by a lot of people, it's going to take a while before people start talking about it again and the idea that it isn't so bad becomes more popular. I think that if the producers had let the initial style of this series play out for a bit longer, it would have become more popular and next year would have had higher ratings - and if next year was good, the following year would have had more still. This is the way to do things - trying to boost ratings quickly is just clutching at straws and it isn't going to work. If they want to get high viewing figures, they need to either acquire them gradually by playing the long game, or else rest the series for a bit and bring it back in five years' time marketing it to a new audience.

This is the thing though. Start the series in June as usual and not so that it immediately clashes with BGT and Eurovision and the viewing figures would probably be higher.
Actually advertise the series beforehand and viewing figures would probably be higher.
Don't reveal the cast before the launch night and viewing figures would probably be higher.
Actually give us at least some live feed (even the equivalent of BB14's few hours at night would be better than nowt) and the viewing figures would probably be higher.

I really do think that the poor start had very little to do with the actual house, because things were far from boring. There was certainly enough going on to make the highlighst shows watchable. Do all the things I suggested above and I think they would've had a higher base to work with. It would've at least equaled BB15 IMO.

In stead they blame it all on the house dynamics and just start to try and plaster over ever-growing cracks that are made even bigger with each horrible twist. You may be able to sustain a higher level of interest for this series (still not high enough anyway) by pulling of stunt after stunt but in the long run it's not gonna do the show any good.

That's a good point actually. Why do you think they're doing all of this then, if getting the ratings a bit higher would be as easy as that? I don't understand it.

But do footie fan call for the game to be axed?

feel like people wouldn't be complaining as much if viewing figures were higher

BB has already been secured until 2018 I believe.

Yeah give you that.