Big mistake compromises eviction voting

Friday's episode fails to give out numbers to save Tahan and Tim

As Australia prepares to go to the polls Big Brother made a big mistake in Friday night’s show which could inadvertently affect the outcome of this weeks eviction.

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Big Brother: Editors’ Smorgasbord

Nothing like live television

And so far Big Brother is nothing like live television.   We all know that the live 24/7 feed is long gone, but so far this year there has been less than 24 minutes of live action broadcast from the Big Brother house.

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Random Ramblings…

A few thoughts… and a look ahead to BBUK.

Firstly, the nominations. I’ve hated the new process from the start as it’s just not Big Brother, but I’ve got to concede it had the desired effect of keeping the characters in and kicking the pot-plants out, and I do think they should have stuck with it until the end of the season.

However, that being said we learnt more about the housemates’ relationships in the first round of proper nominations than we have in all the previous eviction votes – and now the HMs can get rid of who they want, and the viewer can get the final say. Perfect.

And although it’s much better IMO recording them and airing the nominations in the Daily Show, they need to tighten it all up a bit. It would be best to call the HMs into the diary room randomly during the morning rather than sitting them all down to do it, and that way the noms can be spread through the show a bit more, rather than in a couple of packages at the end.

On to Intruders and yeah, whatever. Same old same old with a VT entrance and splitting the HMs up. And now they’ve arrived, Ollie is sidelined in the daily shows, and Ollie is the only reason I started downloading again.

BBUK

The new series of Big Brother UK begins on Thursday and after a tough year last year, it’s time for the show to fight back.

Whether it will remains to be seen – it came back from the brink in BB5, so it’s got a proven history of revamping itself when required, even if they’ve left it a series or two too late this time.

Davina is back – and looking like one sexy mama in the pre-season photo shoots, while it remains to be seen what new hosts George Lamb and Zezi Ifore bring to BBLB.

The house is looking great though, and will be home to 16 HMs from Thursday night, with the first eviction due on Friday 13th.

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Great expectations… greater disappointment?

Cast our minds back a couple of weeks and everyone seemed to have high hopes for the series.

The promo campaign was great, the signs of change were there and from their initial intros, the housemates seemed to be just what the show needed. Two weeks later though and we’re already dissecting what went wrong.

The daily shows are just dull – partly due to the housemates leaving their back stories and baggage at the doors, but mainly due to complete lack of structure. The housemates aren’t given the opportunity to shine, perhaps with the exception of the weekly “family dinner”, while the lack of any real task means content is thin on the ground. Cleaning is not entertaining – especially when the task is minus any of the humour required to make it work.

But now – the major moan – axing nominations. The new system removes the core element from the show, more important than evictions or the public vote – it’s what the housemates really think of each other.

How a housemate nominates reveals alot about their character – whether they are spineless, manipulative, game-players or hold a grudge. Equally as important is how a housemate reacts to being nominated – that can often determine their fate, and similarly, a housemate being cocky about not being nominated can see them getting evicted sooner rather than later too.

However, giving this power to the viewers has now removed the key component of the show, and the structure to the daily shows too. Indeed now it’s just a case of voting for your favourite with those at the bottom facing elimination it’s just like every other reality show around – Big Brother has well and truly lost it’s unique selling point.

But, this being Big Brother of course they’ve screwed it up even further with the most ridiculous FNL twists ever. An over complicated affairs sees a housemate saved, 4th from bottom nominated and the FNL winner have four points to evict and two to save. The other HMs will vote with one and two points to evict.

It’s over complicated to say the least – and though I’m not a fan of viewers nominating, HMs evicting, keeping it simpler would give it a much greater chance of succeeding. Just let the FNL winner save one of the bottom three and then the other HMs vote out one of the other two. That’s it – simple!
Talking of voting though, the real scandal this week has been the “webmates”. Voted in by Australia, voted out by Terri two days later – the biggest insult to viewers yet. And this week they’ve barely featured in the daily show at all – indeed on Tuesday and Thursday they were nothing more than non-speaking extras.

And then we reach the end of the week with Nathan reminding BB he’s in the house by inconveniently winning FNL. Big Brother of course though continues to deny his existence and finds a reason to give the prize to Travis instead. The worst thing is we all know if Terri had won there is no way BB would have taken away her HoH powers.

Anyway, I’ve lasted two weeks and as usual by now it’s only key episodes I’ll be interested in. I think the fact BBUK is about to return influences that slightly too, but so far BB08 is dangerously close to becoming even worse than the Noble era – especially if producers continue to make up the rules as they go along.

As always, BBBA members can add their views on the Userblogs.

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