Big Brother: Editors’ Smorgasbord

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.

As Behind Big Brother regulars are fully aware the launch show is actually recorded 24 hours prior to broadcast, as it was for most of the original run on Ten.   Traditionally though the main auditorium shows that follow are live – and though Sonia may be live on your television, so far few of the “twists” she’s introduced have actually been broadcast live from the house.

The big twist on Day 2 introducing Drew and Jade as a “married” couple saw them enter the house a day earlier.   The only live action from the house during that show was a three and a half minute cross to the house where Sonia revealed details about Showdown – the successor to Friday Night Live.   And that’s not live either – it’s recorded on Fridays and from the looks of the edit, Shelly Craft’s part is filmed separately from the commentary of Mike Goldman and BB9’s Michael.   This led to a day of the official website updates trying to avoid revealing the identity of who had won a place in the “Presidential Suite”.

Monday night and the second live show of the series fronted by Sonia did actually see the central focus of the show play out live, with the latter part of the show being dominated by live action from the house as Rohan and Katie & Lucy entered the house.

This seasons nominations debuted on Tuesday night and there was one notable difference to last year – the absense of the “Live” bug as housemates made their nominations.  Forum members watching the show picked up on some questionable edits, notably during Matt and Drew’s nominations, which pointed to them being pre-recorded, along with there being no cross as any point to the house from Sonia in the studio:

Will The most obvious giveaway was the lack of a ‘LIVE HOUSE’ tag in the corner of the screen. But there were little things, like you could see edit points where housemates suddenly got up and entered the chamber a bit too quickly. Plus every time they went between the house and Sonja it was always timed too perfectly, there were none of those pauses and moments you wait for someone to speak or get in position like we’ve always had in the past on a live show.

Sly Drew (I think it was) appeared in the chamber like a Harry Potter fireplace and should be thrown out for being a wizard.

Wormow Disappointed it isn’t live. So now whenever the housemate says something that they shouldn’t or if the chamber isn’t really ‘soundproof’ – we’ll never know.

Kegztaa Is it Live?? It doesn’t seem like it!  When matt was called it showed him get up, next shot he was walking into the chamber.

mikidiki When Drew came in to the chamber he was looking down and then the instant when it changed cameras he was looking straight forward – unless he rapidly moved his head up it’s not live!

iJake The fact that Sonia keeps saying “LIVE” makes me hate her for lying so blatantly. I feel like I’m supposed to be able to trust her, but nope, I just can’t when she’s lying like this.

insider06 The question is simple. If the Housemates nominated on Tuesday night, how come footage of Tuesday morning showed the nominated housemates already in the safe house?

Confirmation came in Wednesday’s daily show that the housemates had nominated on Tuesday morning when, in a conversation with Tim, Big Brother referenced the nominees as being announced in the morning, and footage from during the day showed the current Halfway Housemates in the Halfway House. Had nominations been live during the Tuesday night broadcast all the housemates would have still been in the Safe House following the temporary closure of the Halfway House on Monday night.

In total so far the housemates have only been seen live and unedited for just 22 minutes – and the first nominations did highlight how much viewers have been missing as housemates referred to incidents and personality traits that were not obvious to the viewer – with many surprised by how many points Mikkayla picked up due to being seen as bossy.

The next live show is on Monday in which a housemate will leave the house live – though with three days of highlights to cram into the eviction show it will leave very little time for Sonia to interact with the housemates prior to one being booted out – and very little time for the show to even attempt to convey what has really been happening in the house over the weekend.