BBUK: Complete "Producer's Bible" from 2000

[Being Big Brother]

Some of the more "hardcore" fans among you may already have seen this – I get the impression it "did the rounds" among some fansite owners back in the day.

That's certainly how I ended up with it.

All I've done is type it up, faithfully recreate the tables, spreadsheets, and diagrams, and redact a bunch of surnames. Other than that, it's unchanged – I even preserved the inconsistent capitalisation (should "Diary Room" and "House" be capitalised? They clearly hadn't decided yet) and surprisingly-frequent typos.

EXCLUSIVE: the original Big Brother UK Producer's Bible from 2000

I've had this gathering dust on my hard drive for years, now, in the form of 24 fairly sloppy, low-quality scans. I figured the show's 25th anniversary was a good time to finally type it up and share...

beingbigbrother.blog

Figured the 25th anniversary was a good time to finally let it out into the world.

 

[MDH_2000]

Some of the more "hardcore" fans among you may already have seen this – I get the impression it "did the rounds" among some fansite owners back in the day.

That's certainly how I ended up with it.

All I've done is type it up, faithfully recreate the tables, spreadsheets, and diagrams, and redact a bunch of surnames. Other than that, it's unchanged – I even preserved the inconsistent capitalisation (should "Diary Room" and "House" be capitalised? They clearly hadn't decided yet) and surprisingly-frequent typos.

EXCLUSIVE: the original Big Brother UK Producer's Bible from 2000

I've had this gathering dust on my hard drive for years, now, in the form of 24 fairly sloppy, low-quality scans. I figured the show's 25th anniversary was a good time to finally type it up and share...

beingbigbrother.blog

Figured the 25th anniversary was a good time to finally let it out into the world.

Never heard of this, thanks!

 

[Brekkie]

Interesting stuff. Watching the documentary on the original C4 documentary on the Netherlands version I posted the other day they probably broke the basic rules of the concept more than ever acknowledged.

One thing I do wish BBUK would return to is giving HMs virtually nothing to do on Thursdays so the focus of Fridays show is the live eviction. Pretty much since BB5 they've done the opposite though wanting tasks to dominated the eviction night highlights

 

[timmy]

Some of the more "hardcore" fans among you may already have seen this – I get the impression it "did the rounds" among some fansite owners back in the day.

That's certainly how I ended up with it.

All I've done is type it up, faithfully recreate the tables, spreadsheets, and diagrams, and redact a bunch of surnames. Other than that, it's unchanged – I even preserved the inconsistent capitalisation (should "Diary Room" and "House" be capitalised? They clearly hadn't decided yet) and surprisingly-frequent typos.

EXCLUSIVE: the original Big Brother UK Producer's Bible from 2000

I've had this gathering dust on my hard drive for years, now, in the form of 24 fairly sloppy, low-quality scans. I figured the show's 25th anniversary was a good time to finally type it up and share...

beingbigbrother.blog

Figured the 25th anniversary was a good time to finally let it out into the world.

Each person can bring two suitcases into the house. One is for clothing, the other for personal luxuries such as toiletries, books or magazines, cigarettes, wine or beer and items of sentimental value such as photographs. No more than six bottles or cans of beer or two bottles of wine per person are allowed.

Goodness.

BTW whilst I appreciate your OCD/attention to detail, you could probably just correct the minor typos rather than pointing them out with "[sic]'".

 

[Afflllate]

Other than that, it's unchanged – I even preserved the inconsistent capitalisation (should "Diary Room" and "House" be capitalised? They clearly hadn't decided yet) and surprisingly-frequent typos.

This is cool! and yeah, in my recaps I often capitalise Diary room, one of the integral rooms in the house! haha. Then again way back I used to have a habit of throwing capitals out haphazardly all over the place whenever I felt like it or felt certain things or words looked 'cool' with one and people would pull me up on it being Ungrammarz and unnecessary and I've reigned it in a lot since Lol.

 

[The10thDoctor]

i notice in all that there was no mention that housemates are not to discuss nominations

 

[kamui]

Each person can bring two suitcases into the house. One is for clothing, the other for personal luxuries such as toiletries, books or magazines, cigarettes, wine or beer and items of sentimental value such as photographs. No more than six bottles or cans of beer or two bottles of wine per person are allowed.

Just checked the (excerpts) of the rule book for the first German season that got leaked. Seemed to be somewhat standard although the rule book for contestants specified that you can bring "no more than 10 packs of cigarettes or 5 packs of tobacco, no more than one book or magazine" per housemate. They were also allowed to bring a CD, which had to be handed over to Big Brother. And they could have consulted with Big Brother in regards to bringing hard liquor.

i notice in all that there was no mention that housemates are not to discuss nominations

I'm curious to know when the document was written. It says the US is "currently in production", which might be taken as it was written just weeks before the UK launch. But at the same time, it could have been written well in advance knowing that it's gonna be read at a later point. The argument for this is that it only references incidents for the Dutch and German version, but not for the Spanish version. Which could indicate that it was written while the Spanish version was on air and there might not have been any communication about the Spanish version.

I'm rambling about this, because I'd be curious to figure out how they've defined "discussing nominations" back then - and when. The UK has and had a pretty strict view on this rule, but the rule hasn't been that strict in prior versions. I've checked the leaked German rule book to see what it says about nominations.. the leak didn't say that much but it had this line: "Residents are not allowed to make agreements among themselves." I assume that the first Dutch season used similar language. The phrase is quite vague, certainly more so than "can't discuss nominations" and thus, there wasn't a huge push against discussing nominations. They only seem to step in when there was actually some coordination going on (e.g. people trying to get nominated by fellow housemates). Producers once said during a celebrity season that housemates discussing who they want to nominate is not making an agreement and thus not a rule break.

But then we had the first season of Big Brother in Spain, when housemates made proper agreements from the first week onwards, which were not punished by the producers. Some people say that it wasn't against the rules back then. That might be the reason why the document is not saying much about discussing nominations: They might not have considered huge conspiracies among the housemates. But I doubt that it was not part of the rules in Spain. I don't see why they wouldn't have added it from the rules book, when Germany definitely and the Netherlands very likely had a rule.

Some say that a punishment was considered in Spain, but producers ultimately decided to let things play out on their own. I find that more believable. I've read articles said that producers at first thought it might be a crisis, but eventually embraced the situation. However, it might have led to tighter rules afterwards, which then led to the UK to just ban talking about nominations in general.

 

[Brekkie]

Even the UK wasn't quite as petty about it in the early years - indeed the Nasty Nick situation came from the housemates policing the rules rather than producers.

 

[Kingston]

Even the UK wasn't quite as petty about it in the early years - indeed the Nasty Nick situation came from the housemates policing the rules rather than producers.

It’s 100% being used as content these days more than it is about protecting the integrity of the nomination process. Jokes really.

 

[February]

Each person can bring two suitcases into the house. One is for clothing, the other for personal luxuries such as toiletries, books or magazines, cigarettes, wine or beer and items of sentimental value such as photographs. No more than six bottles or cans of beer or two bottles of wine per person are allowed.

Goodness.

BTW whilst I appreciate your OCD/attention to detail, you could probably just correct the minor typos rather than pointing them out with "[sic]'".

2 bottles of wine? Obviously not expecting anyone to stay more that 2 nights