The great thing about our very own Userblogs is when you can’t be bothered writing your own blog, you can just cut and paste someone elses. Unlike certain sections of the media though, we’ll give the credit where credit is due…
So firstly, clairebbbear blames YouTube:
Death by youtube: how generation Y killed Big Brother Australia
Just like death, and taxes, the end of BB was always inevitable.
It would have been nice for BB to have gone out in style, with a dramatic flourish at its execution, but today’s news feels like euthanasia after a prolongued period of suffering, during which the show lost all traces of what it once was.
The post-mortem has not yet been conducted, and I am sure that it will reveal multiple causes of death, ranging from the producers, to the hosts, to the apathy of the audience and the concept as a whole.
But I feel that the actual reason can be traced to a factor that could not have been anticipated back in 2001. That factor is youtube, and more precisely what it offers to the young viewers on whom BB depended.
BB has always been a young person’s show, especially in Australia. The 7pm timeslot, the voyeurism factor, the preference for pretty HMs and the dominance of storylines that belong in the schoolyard all helped BB become required viewing for teenagers and young adults. With the young viewers came sponsors, and in the beginning they were falling over themselves to be involved with a program that spoke to young viewers like no other show.
Then came youtube. It is not a direct rival to BB, but its presence has hung over the show – and in fact channel Ten as a whole – like a curse.
Meanwhile bb-06 doesn’t blame Jackie O:
My last blog?
Well…I’m guessing this could be my last blog. There’s no ‘next year’ and I’m certainly not wasting my time writing a blog about the final week of this crap series. I’m not even sure I’ll watch. Hell, there’s a Daily Show on now and I have a DVD menu up on my screen.
In my last blog I talked about a couple of positives about BB08 and one of them was Jackie-O. I remember something I read on the internet at the beginning of this year about Jackie-O being the touch of death for television series – naming all the flops she’d been a part of. Well, she’s got another flop to add to her resume but it was not a flop because of her. She was one of the very few positive points about this years Big Brother and while I’m not claiming she had the presence of Gretel – she did have the grace and that little bit of class in this years BB gave it same moments that were worth watching. So take it easy on here.
Kyle, on the other hand, does deserve to be blamed in my stage. If he hadn’t been so keen to act like a total prat and had tried to get some likability about himself – people would have watched. A smile was all that was needed – but it was too much to ask of Kyle ‘All Talk and No Action’ Sandilands. While I very much doubt that Jackie-O reads this site – my advice to her to is to get away from him. Having seen you on stage with Mike and Kyle this year – you’re so much more entertaining when you’re not weighed down with the former. You’ll have a better career without him, if you ask me.
These new producers made a hell of a lot of mistakes – they produced a ‘made to order’ Big Brother this year and I don’t believe that they for one second thought they’d given us something new. Ten is a network without imagination, without the courage to try something new and that’s why it is, and always will be, a network without success. Why they wanted to continue with Kris Noble’s unsuccesful format when they could have picked up where Abbott’s left off and had a successful show is beyond me. These producers made some bad decisions and I said some bad things about them – but at the end of the day I realise they did the best they could to please the fans while keeping within the strict outline set for them.
Yes – the blame for killing Big Brother lies squarely on Ten’s shoulders.
So what do you think about Big Brother being pulled from the schedules next year – and where did it all go wrong? Post your blog entry here.
As for myself, not surprised at all, and not before time. Perhaps it will return one day, but it’s got to be kept as far away from Ten as physically possible.