Big Brother Germany 2024

[Brekkie]

Busy week for BB this week with the return of the civilian version on streaming platform Joyn, though there will be some shows on Sat 1 too. It runs for 100 days and reuses the Container from Promi BB last year with minimal changes, with 17 HMs announced..

Big Brother 2024: Container, Bewohner, Geheimnisse - Alle Infos zum Start

Das Warten hat für Big Brother-Fans ein Ende: Bereits am Montag meldet sich der Große Bruder mit einer neuen 100-tägigen Normalo-Staffel auf Joyn und Sat.1 zurück. In einer Pressekonferenz hat die Mediengruppe nun neue Informationen zu Big Brother 2024 mitgeteilt. mehr »

bbfun.de

Big Brother 2024 Kandidaten: Die Liste mit allen 17 Bewohnern

8000 Menschen haben sich für Big Brother 2024 beworben. Von ihnen haben Joyn und Sat.1 insgesamt 17 Kandidaten ausgewählt, die als Bewohner in den berühmten Big Borther-Container ziehen werden. Mit ihrer Auswahl wollen die Macher einen Querschnitt durch die Gesellschaft bieten und setzen daher...

bbfun.de

 

[kamui]

They're heavily leaning into the whole back to basics and sell it as the most consequential step for the show. The channel kept saying how stripping things back keeping things authentic etc. and that you don't have to modernise the show. But I think some of these decisions are motivated more by budget cuts than the deep conviction that the original format is the best incarnation of the format. Since daily shows will only be shown online (but for free), they won't throw a shit ton of money at it. I like though that they keep the weekly live shows, which are on traditional TV, rather short. They only run for an hour, which is quite short for German television. I don't like that they keep having bi-weekly nominations and evictions.

Even though the channel stresses that the original concept makes the most sense for them, the head of EndemolShine Germany claims that Big Brother will be more unpredictable than ever and that anything can happen at any time.. He also said that producers visited the UK and the Dutch crew.. so they might incorporate more UK-style twists (e.g. not giving alle or some of the houseguests their suitcases). Which would be welcome change for the German version, I think, which imho struggled with selling twists to the audience. They've done many of them, too, but either never hyped them up or sold them more as competitions or challenges than twists.

And they definitely need more hype. I haven't seen much hype for the new season. Not even amongst the potential housemates. They've only had 8000 people applying for the show.. but then, I don't even think that the producers/the channel are very hyped. They've streamed the press conference for everyone to watch on Joyn and I don't think their head of reality was very excited about the new season.

On a more positive note though: They're doing some research along the launch. They were looking for people to be part of some focus group and you'd get some questions during the first two weeks of the show. I think you already had to tell them what you like or dislike about the show. I'm not part of the group though, so won't be able to tell you the questions they'll ask.

Maybe also worth to note: The executive producer of the season has been involved in almost all seasons of Big Brother starting from the very first season. The only ones he hasn't been involved with were the 11th civilian season (the final season of its initial run on a different channel) and the first celebrity season. But I think the community's opinion on him comparable to that of Alison Grodner.

 

[Kingston]

Interesting. Makes me wonder why they’re even attempting another civilian series to begin with?

 

[kamui]

Joyn used to be a younger-skewing streaming platform which had catch-up for their TV channels and otherwise mainly shows with influencers and YouTubers. Last year they decided that they wanted to reach a broader audience, probably also because Joyn was and is still trailing RTL+, their main competitor besides all the US streaming services. So they've decided to invest some money and ordered loads of reality formats. Big Brother was probably among them, because they claim that the live feed was doing really well for them. Which doesn't surprise me, it was probably the first interesting paid-only content that they've had.

Based on interviews, the successful return of BBUK might have played into their decision to bring it back, too. Although the show has never really been gone here in Germany.

Launch night so far has not been very spectacular. They've took a page from BBUK's return book and have the housemates play some party games. They also played hide and seek and the first two housemates that got found have to sleep outside until further notice.. something that BB Germany loves. There are also two housemates that won't get their suitcase, but they didn't blow them up like they did in the UK. One housemates is already up for eviction, like in the UK. One housemate was also able to hand out immunity from the first eviction and put up another housemate.

The host also teased that more people will be nominated during the week before one has to leave next Monday.

 

[kamui]

Interesting. Makes me wonder why they’re even attempting another civilian series to begin with?

It might be the last one for a very long time, though. Ratings are in and they are average at best, I'd consider them bad. Less than a million tuned in, it's been the lowest-rated civilian launch on any of the main channels. They have only been lower for the 2015 season which was on a much smaller digital channel.

Obviously TV ratings aren't the only important thing for a show that mainly airs online, but it shows that there isn't a huge interest for the new season..

 

[Craxus]

Watched it last night and can already tell that this version is going to bomb. They had one chance and they are going to ruin it. Big Brother is fun because you get to see everything. You don't get to see everything on joyn because the are scared anyone will be offended. Also, it's clear not much is going to happen. The contestants will spend most of their time doing nothing but talking in a boring house. Not much challenges or long lasting competition. Probably some short, low maintenance competition. So dissapointing that when they bring back 24/7 they make it so utterly boring.

 

[Brekkie]

It's always tricky when going back to basics because as soon as they do the viewers who've been asking for them to ditch tge twists find the launch boring if it doesn't launch with a big bang of a twist.

Will see how this pans out.

 

[kamui]

I think one of the biggest issues that German producers face is that the German Big Brother has been turned into a different kind of show and that divides the audience, probably even more than it was the case with BB on Channel4 and Channel 5.

Many German fans regard BB5 as the best season ever (which I wouldn't do for various reasons) and it looked and felt very different from the traditional Big Brother. BB5 is visual divide in the house, rich and poor, people living outside under the worst conditions, people leaving the house and climbing up mountains or running a military course on the match field next to the house. Big Brother almost being more of a physical challenge, less so a mental challenge. That mentality was also evident when the last civilian season launched and had two separate houses that didn't reflect a poor/rich divide. Many people thought that the block house was a very bad poor area, because the conditions there were not bad.

I actually get the feeling sometimes that BB5 was the first season of Big Brother for many people since so many associate Big Brother so much with the elements of the battle concept. So in the German community, I think you'll always have one group that doesn't like the concept of a specific season.

And I think the producers of the show are at least somewhat aware of that divide when they claim that the original format is back but at the same stress that Big Brother is gonna be tougher than ever like they've done on yesterday's show. They're trying to address both audiences.. and that's why two people had to sleep outside for the night. That's a concept taken from Big Brother 5. It just won't satisfy the BB5 audience because it won't be a permanent feature of the show. It won't ever be as extreme as BB5. And - while BB5 also had more tame competitions - hide and seek is probably not what they associate with that season.


Regarding the launch show itself. While I think, that they made some odd choices with the launch, I don't think they scared away any people during the show... There isn't any public data on the ratings curve during the show, but Vodafone publishes some data on their households. And those show a somewhat steady number of viewers for the first hour, then there is some drop before they reached their peak at 10pm, so 15 minutes before the show finished. If anything, it indicates that 17 housemates were too many people to move in on one day. But it's not like people tuned in, got disappointed all the way through and wouldn't return.

It's more like people haven't tuned in at all. They failed to excite people for the new season and relied too much on the Big Brother name to get people excited. Apparently, they had some influencers and podcasts hosts living in the house for a couple of days... but I haven't seen any of that in the run up to the show.

Also, I don't see their concept working of having the weekly live shows on Sat1 and the rest online. I think it could work but not in the way they are doing it. It seems like they are living up to their claim that the show will be more unpredictable than ever and that anything can happen at any time. Two people are already up for eviction and they've teased that more people will be nominated during the week. They'd probably want you to watch the feeds or at least the daily shows to catch up, but there will always be more people watching the TV shows than the online shows.

So anyone who can't be bothered to watch things online, will tune in on Monday to a 1-hour show without knowing the housemates. They have to get the gist within less than 60 minutes before they have to decide whom to evict. At the same time, online viewers will probably get bored by the run down of the week, because they've already watched the daily shows. They've always cut down on the weekly recaps on the live shows, because people seemed to hate them.

So by next Monday, I expect a lot of people to be disappointed even more.

 

[Craxus]

When they said "anything can happen at any time", I think they meant nothing will happen. Ever. I have watched the live since yesterday. They have done nothing but talk as far as I have seen. Maybe this is German bb, but for me BB is more fun and games. Weekly tasks. Challenges, parties and competition.

 

[Brekkie]

I think a few have tried the idea of the weekly live shows on the main service and then the daily shows on the secondary service - not sure anywhere has done it successfully.

Agree the weekly viewers do need a recap but it needs to be done in a way it doesn't alienate the daily viewers, so probably best to have a weekly round up air prior to the live show (perhaps released online earlier) so those who have watched all week can just tune in to the live show.

 

[Brekkie]

When they said "anything can happen at any time", I think they meant nothing will happen. Ever. I have watched the live since yesterday. They have done nothing but talk as far as I have seen. Maybe this is German bb, but for me BB is more fun and games. Weekly tasks. Challenges, parties and competition.

Arguably housemates just talking to each other is Big Brother in it's purest form. And it's Day 2 - the HMs are just getting to know each other. The format points usually come later.

Even BBUSA with it's competition based format has far more downtime than gametime.

 

[kamui]

When they said "anything can happen at any time", I think they meant nothing will happen. Ever. I have watched the live since yesterday. They have done nothing but talk as far as I have seen. Maybe this is German bb, but for me BB is more fun and games. Weekly tasks. Challenges, parties and competition.

There will be weekly tasks, which for some reason have been renamed "task of the week". They've already teased that it's gonna be a part of the weekly show in Sat.1 to reveal if they passed their task or not. There will also be some temptations for the single person who does the shopping afterwards, which might affect how much money will be able to do the actual shopping.

The warm-up show on Joyn also teased that they had a siren in the living area, which will go off when there is some task for a single person or a group of people (again, something taken from BB4/5). They've called it challenges but I assume that it will be more like tasks and not challenges like Germany used to do on BB5. I think there will be some games on the weekly live show, too. They've been looking for a game producer recently, which I think was probably for Big Brother.

But don't expect any wacky or demanding US-style competitions. Germany used to do them, but on last year's Celebrity Big Brother they've played Jenga, Memory, coin tosses and other simple games.

There might be some party along the way, because they love to throw them in. Housemates could have had their own party tonight. It's Kevin's birthday today, so he got a cake and a Happy Birthday song. I guess the housemates didn't celebrate it any further because they were busy with arriving, claiming their beds, unpacking etc.

 

[kamui]

For any international people wanting to have a look into the house:

They stream the feeds for free between 4pm and 7pm as well as 2am and 9am German time and it doesn't look like it's geo-blocked. Anyone with a VPN can yet again go to Joyn Austria and watch the feeds there for free 24/7.

 

[Craxus]

Why am I watching hours of this every day. Its so boring. They never do anything
How will they survive 100 days of complete boredom in this house. And how can the producers think that a bunch of people in a house doing nothing is gonna bring viewers. I'm taking a break. Will check back in a week or something to see if things have changed.

Edit: And BB Germany used to be so good! What happened!

 

[kamui]

I think a few have tried the idea of the weekly live shows on the main service and then the daily shows on the secondary service - not sure anywhere has done it successfully.

Agree the weekly viewers do need a recap but it needs to be done in a way it doesn't alienate the daily viewers, so probably best to have a weekly round up air prior to the live show (perhaps released online earlier) so those who have watched all week can just tune in to the live show.

It was the first proper live show last week, I don't think they've done well with presenting a show that makes sense for people that don't watch daily shows online. It had a 5-minute recap which touched on some events in the house and I don't think you'd get to know people like you do in the US or Canada. I don't think that people who don't watch online, would have understood how the eviction cycle worked. You saw that some people nominated some people, but you wouldn't get why those people were selected to nominate or why people ended up being nominated.

There was also a five minute recap which replaces the usual 30-minute daily show. And there was a 2-minute recap of the weekly task followed by a longer reveal if they've passed the task. There was no live competition or game during the show despite them looking for a games editor. However, there were another round of nominations where the previously nominated housemates nominated one more person for eviction. These nominations were not done in the secrecy of the diary room, but the non-nominated housemates were not present during nominations.

The whole nomination process was absolutely not back to basics with somewhat open nominations and killer nominations, but the weekly task was a classic early 2000s weekly task (running 600 kilometres or so on a treadmill).

I think the ratings reflect the fact that the German fan base is a bit divided. The weekly live show lost almost half of its audience from launch night. People will say that it's because it was broadcast at a later time but Promi Big Brother never lost a huge junk of their audience when the show aired at a later time. But for me, it just shows that the concept is not working if you're only watching the weekly live shows. You won't get sucked into the show and if anything, the live show will make them a few extra bucks because of TV advertising, but I don't think it will win them any new viewers online. (That said: If you watched the daily shows online, the 1-hour live show worked just fine.. not a lot of filler content. I think it worked better than the live shows for the previous civilian version, that dragged on because it had too much filler content.)

Yesterday, Joyn released a press release claiming that that Big Brother has been a huge success for them so far and that it exceeded expectations. However, they didn't really give good indicators for that. They said it was the most successful launch of a reality series on their platform, but most of their reality series on their platforms are crap. None of them caused any hype or got a second season, so not being the most successful launch would have been quite the embarrassment for the show.

They also claim that individual viewing time for the live feeds is on par with the live feeds for Promi Big Brother last year. But again, that's not saying much about how many people are actually watching... just that the people watching enjoy it as much as Promi Big Brother (unless people who dislike it still watch hours of it every day). But that underlines my opinion that the fan base is divided..

So yeah, it remains to be seen if the numbers of people watching online is indeed sufficient for them. It might be, because the show is likely produced on a much smaller budget than the last two failed civilian series. But who knows..

 

[Craxus]

I think the problem with these producers is that they do not understand what made BB so big in the past. Its the voyeurs dream. Being able to spy on the people in the house, listening in on all the drama and conversations, finding your favourite and follow them around by choosing what camera you want to watch. This desire to be able to watch someone without them seeing you, in a non creepy way since this is a tv production, is simply human nature. The BBs of today are politically correct, censored versions where you get one camera where some producers decides what you should be watching. You spend hours watching boring conversations because some producers finds this interesting and also politically correct enough to broadcast. Big Brother sweden came back and were heavily censored and controlled. Noone should say anything offensive or sexy. Noone should get too drunk and so on. Frequent censoring of all the cameras. They were shut down for long periods several times a day. Ofcourse this only lasted 2 seasons before it was cancelled. You might bring in some of the older crowd but you will never bring in the young crowd this way, so this is a dying concept unless something changes. Bring back several, static cameras so you the viewer can decide what you want to watch. Also bring back boobs, because like ir or not, there are lots of people who would watch simply to see naked people in the shower. Call them creepy or whatever you want, but this is part of the 24/7 uncensored experience that made Big Brother such a big hit. So you have now lost these people and you have lost the younger crowd. You are left with a very small demographic. This season of BB germany has so far been nothing but talking by quite boring people. Some discussions on food and running on a threadmill. Its fine as a weekly task but this cant be the only thing happening that week. I miss the days were the contestants were chained together and left to stand on a pole for 12 hours(BB sweden/Norway 2006).

Its like this season is just a bunch of people locked in a house bought from Wish and filled with handmedowns furniture that they found on the street, and they are made to wait in this house for 100 days. The person who does not die of boredom wins. I'm pretty sure there will be no normal BB season on Joyn next year and the whole concept of Big Brother is dying unless some country goes back to the roots and give us a proper Big Brother. If anyone gets offended by the season in the media that is exactly what the show needs. The offended person wont watch anymore, but hundreds of people reading that article will. The show Paradise Hotel in Norway tried to do a politically correct version and media was all about how friendly this season was. Well, guess what. Almost noone watched it and the production had to go back to their roots this year.

edit: spelling mistakes were made

 

[kamui]

Its like this season is just a bunch of people locked in a house bought from Wish and filled with handmedowns furniture that they found on the street, and they are made to wait in this house for 100 days. [...] the whole concept of Big Brother is dying unless some country goes back to the roots

But Germany is literally going back to the roots, especially with the house. They used the same house for last year's Celebrity Big Brother with minor adjustments (mainly some workout furniture, the toilet is now accessible through the bathroom and there is a laundry machine now. Plus, they removed the door to the (sponsored) supermarket and added the "Room of decisions") and the first housemate to enter the house was the runner-up of the first season. His first thought was actually that they've re-used the furniture from his season.

Going back to basics, certainly worked out for the celebrity season which had the best ratings in four or five years. I think it works for anyone watching the civilian version, too. This weekend, a major publication on the media industry ran an article praising the season and how stripping things back worked out very well for the show. They also said that feedback on fan forums is quite good.

I wouldn't agree with everything in the article and thought it was a bit too much praise for the show. But comments for this article seemed to agree with the author's opinion. And I do think that most people on forums would agree with the statement "it's enjoyable despite the fact that there were better seasons in the past".

You've referred to Paradise Hotel Norway. So maybe it's a language thing, but I think the housemates for this season are the stronger part of the season, although I don't think they can keep up with last year's UK cast which I thought was stronger. But it might be the best German cast in a very long time. I think the last cast that I've enjoyed more was in season 8, maybe season 9.

I think production is weak though. The weekly tasks are lame. Last week they had to guess how much water goes into the hot tub, multiply the amount of litres by two in order to get the number of minutes that they have to sit in the hot tub. They also had to chop the wood to heat up the hot tub. It's not exciting viewing.

I'm also not a fan of the new (?) process for nominations. For the second week, some of the housemates nominated at random times during the week with the rest nominating during the live show. But during the week, it's only one person (or for this week: one duo) nominating at a time and they have to reveal their nominations. And in the end, half of the house ends up being nominated...

I get the idea behind it: They want to keep the daily shows and the live feed interesting, you have to watch to be up-to-date. Plus, German production hates nominations and evictions being predictable for viewers and the new process makes these discussions a bit harder. And having 8 people up for eviction helps with generating additional revenue through the premium phone voting.

But I think it ruins a core part of the show: having an advantage over the housemates and actually being in the know as a viewer.. it drives the discussions. Plus, we kinda get robbed of seeing how housemates live with the fact that there might be a 50% of them leaving the show. I don't feel like many of this year's housemates care about being nominated when half the house ends up being nominated anyways.


Also on the ratings front: Viewership for the weekly live show is steady with 540,000 viewers. So people who stayed around after the launch, seem to stay with the show. It's still hard to say if enough people watch it online.

 

[Brekkie]

Thanks for that. Not a fan of producers deciding who nominates in the week and who does it live (I suspect they'll alternate it) but I've always thought just opening nominations soon after the eviction until the time they'd usually take place for HMs to go in and nominate when they wanted could be fun, especially if people nominate out of anger after an argument.

 

[Kingston]

The only nice thing about alternating the live show between nominations and evictions is that you don't need an extra show dedicated to nominations or have them take up space in the daily show but it completely kills the pace. Definitely agree that having some nominate through the week and the remainder in the live show does seem odd especially when a single week cycle would have been a much easier fix.

 

[Brekkie]

One of the best things BBUK did when it launched was switch to weekly nominations and evictions and its no surprise most versions that launched after followed suit, though Germany stuck with the fortnightly cycle for their ever increasing seasons.

The thing is now Promi BB viewers are used to a daily cycle instead so given they've enough HMs to sustain weekly evictions over 100 days it is something they could have stuck with, although perhaps going back to basics means focusing more on the housemates just living with each other over the game aspect.

I've always said thought the social experiment gets more interesting as the numbers truly dwindle and would much rather see 4 HMs at the end than 8-10 (of the initial 17) in the final couple of weeks.