When did BB in this country stop being a kind of social experiment to see how twelve strangers would interact with each other in the extra ordinary circumstances of the house and become the circus it is today?

In the part of London I inhabit ... society's a freakshow ... straight A ...

After BB1 I think

It's seen a steady decline in 'psychological experiment' credibility, that's for sure. It's just a springboard up to the heady heights of z-list mediocri-celebrity now.

Mind you, I still like it.

The moment they put Emma & Michelle back in the house from the bedsit in BB5.

Midway through BB1 I'd say.

about the time the booings started and the ratings soared and even my DENTIST was watching!

when BB4 was really boring and less and less people watched it

once people like kemal got in this year

As soon as Endemol realised theres a sh*tload of money to be earned from freaks.

BB1 and BB2 were quite innocent shows...

By BB3 Endemol knew they could make a sh*tload of money and that's when it started becoming more mainstream and less experimental.

It was BB5 when it turned into a freak show.

Nasty Nick running for 5+ days in the tabs?

According to Bazelgette, from day 0.

Bob I love this thread!
It's still a psycological experiment though.
My guess is the housemates are hand picked to have different personnality types. Rarther than the simple premise of 13 total strangers the focus of BB has chainged to see how far they can push HM and how far will HM push each other.

The environment and contestents are hand picked to cause the most stress possible. It's getting a kinda sick experiment because i wonder how soon it will be before a contestant really does crack or possibly suffer burnout or breakdown.

I agree however each years contestants are becoming "freak show" worthy. In fact a paper i read recently compaired BB to the origanal circus freak shows.

That said i still love the show, and the 13 have shown remarkable guts entering
Its psycology entertainment!

It was never a social experiment, no matter what anyone might say. From day one, it was entertainment for the masses, pure and simple. And on that level (with the exception of BB4), it has succeeded brilliantly. People analyse things too much. BB is great fun to watch and debate. Why not just enjoy it without the need to dissect?

I think the social experiment part of it was the core at the start but once a show takes off like this one has then you've got to think about sustaining it's success. BB4 was a blowout and it seems that a battle between agressive lads, camp queens and bitchy girls is what the public want if you consider the ratings now.

Around about the time Jade Goody entered the house?

It was already a freak show before it began in this country. It meant that exhibitionists like Caroline and Nicola already knew the score from what they would have heard about the foreign programmes, even if they hadn't seen them.

I posted this earlier today in this thread:

According to Peter Bazalgette, speaking about BB1:
Source: http://www.becal.net/toolkit/damaris/bigbro.html

*Sigh* It's simple - at first it was new and people enjoyed watching 12 people sit in a house, and there was sometime little going on, but as the series as they went on were getting boring (eg BB4) then they had to step up the mark to get the viewers....why complain? Just don't watch it, if it's that bad

Why should the 2 be mutually exclusive? ... don't "the masses" have a 'psychology' & isn't what 'they' find entertaining one aspect of it? ...

Not only is BB still a social experiment ... but so are all the offshoots ... like this very forum ... 'society' is humans interacting & communicating ... get the picture? ...

What does he know? ... that's like listening to Malcolm McLaren pontificating about the Sex Pistols ... Bazalgette's no guru, no authority ... he had a bright idea ... didn't understand the ramifications ... anything but unusual ...

That's exactly what I was going to post.

Since the entrance of Victor who came in primarilly to "stir it up".

Shizzel my nizzle? Get to F...

I guess from the outset it was a psychological experiment being used for entertainment, and has since become increasingly a freak show in order to continue to be entertaining in the cut-throat world of competing for ratings within which both Channel 4 and Endemol are operating.

Serious psychological experiments themselves have a rather dubious and checkered history - for example the ones done by Milgram on conformity where participants were asked to administer (imaginary) electric shocks to others, to see how far they'd fo in obeying orders. That kind of thing wouldn't be allowed nowadays. The British Psychological Society lay down a strict code of ethics that have to be adhered to, including that the participants should not suffer adverse effects from the experiment. I know the BPS is concerned about 'reality TV' shows like Big Brother, and there could well be pressure for programmes like Big Brother to also have to adhere to the same code of ethics.......

The quize night where Jade was able to strip off to total nudity while her other HMs sat there fully clothed. Quite apart from the sight of her, I still feel a bit uncomfortable even remembering that night - as if I'd stumbled on a video of a friend doing something I'd never have thought them capable of.