BB Ratings verdict

Viewers switching off due to poor editing

Big Brother 2013 launched on July 29, ranking #4 in the OzTam TV ratings with 1,309,000 viewers – 300,000 fewer than last year’s BB launch. Proof is in the pudding as the series unfolds – the fans are complaining about the editing and ratings are dropping as a result.

Week 1 of Big Brother ratings are as follows:

Launch show, Monday 29/07 – 120 minutes: 1.3 million.
Live special, Tuesday 30/07 – 90 minutes: 1.04 million
Daily show, Wednesday 01/08 – 90 minutes: 1.03 million
Daily show, Thursday 02/08 – 90 minutes: 984,000
Daily show, Friday 02/08 – 30 minutes: 728,000
Showdown, Saturday 02/08 – 60 minutes: 683,000

Big Brother does not air on Sundays this year.

Week 2 started with a Live Surprise Show on Monday – a special airing at a later time of 8pm and filling the to-be weekly Evictions slot, which will take place from next week. No show in the 2nd week has managed to crack the magic million mark – here are the raw figures:

Live Surprise Show – The Latecomers, Monday 05/08 – 90 minutes: 932,000.
Nominations, Tuesday 06/08 – 90 minutes: 880,000
Daily show & Confidential, Wednesday 07/08 – 90 minutes: 754,000
Daily show, Thursday 08/08 – 90 minutes: 825,000

The Big Brother house and housemate cast are, in general, improved over last year. So what is causing Big Brother ratings to take a dive? You only need to turn to the Behind Big Brother forum or the Official Big Brother Facebook page to know. For example:

lyntongo “Channel Nine is guiding the show away from a social experiment to an entertainment show which I think the majority of viewers do not like. All these tasks and games that Big Brother gives to the housemates in the Diary Room I think is to try and make the Daily Show interesting and entertaining but it is actually having the opposite effect.”

mikidiki “We’ve all said the casting is good – the editing is not! We don’t know what is going on in the house, nor do the majority of the people watching the show!”

Scheduling is also a bit of a mess – with start times varying from 6:30 to 8:00 pm depending on the day of the week. And you’d be forgiven for thinking Confidential didn’t go to air on Wednesday night – it did. But there was no indication of when The 60 minute daily show came to an end – no ad break, no credits, no opening titles, not even a 5 second bumper segway. We can only assume Nine knew that viewers would tune out if given the opportunity. Fortunately, there were no gimmicky voice overs, silly kiddie graphics or fictional storylines of yesteryear. But is Confidential really a good show?

Rison “Wow, Confidential 2013 is actually watchable. Thank god they abandoned the 2012 format.”

Meow “If we can’t have adult content during confidential, at least give us cheeky conversations, if there is none to show, just give us regular conversations, please and thank you!”

So Confidential is better, but still has some room to improve. It is the editing which brings the show down – which can be said for the majority of the series so far – not to mention there’s no indication of when the aired highlights occured in the house. Perhaps the contents of Confidential would be best channeled into a 60 minute hosted panel-style spin-off – something alike Big Mouth from 2008 or The Insider in 2003 of the Channel Ten era.

Big Brother still remains to be a highly edited show without access to unedited house footage despite fans continuing to demand live video feeds on our forums and the official Facebook page. How much further will ratings dwindle before Nine executives change something?  Will we ever know what happens in the Big Brother house on Friday & Saturday? Why haven’t Nine executives seized the opportunity to put something of a live-nature together for their Social TV app, Jump-In, and give an edge on competing apps Fango and Zeebox?

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