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Big Brother Australia Celebrates 20 Years

the Theorist

Over-thinker. Over-analyser. Over-complainer.
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The 20th anniversary of Big Brother Australia is approaching, so I thought it might be nice for us to share our memories from the series over the years. What captured your attention about the show? What moments make you feel most nostalgic? Do you have any crazy BBBA moments you can recall?

Whether you've been watching since 2001, started during the mid '00s or enjoyed your first dose with the reboot in 2012, all fans are welcome to reminiscence. Love it or hate it, the show revolutionised reality television in Australia - let alone around the world - and I know many of us have some very fond memories associated with it, especially at its peak popularity.

In celebration of the anniversary, @bbauarchive on Instagram is also looking back at old clips from every season - definitely worth a look!
 
Also, in what I think could be one of the most rarest pieces of footage (of any Big Brother worldwide!) to surface after so many years, check out the tail end of this recently uploaded video...


While the first 2-hours are just as rare, I've clipped it to start at approximately the 2h:12m mark revealing over 50-minutes of raw, unedited multi-angle control room feeds from season 1. šŸ¤Æ I've cross-checked and worked out this footage is from Day 20 (May 12, 2001), the night before Sharna's eviction. Granted, most of it is from the early hours of the morning, but the last 10-minutes are later in the day with footage that has never been seen since the online feeds. I checked and none of the footage here made it to the Daily Show the following day.

Based on this user's other Uplate videos, these all seem to originate from a direct master tape. So... Happy Anniversary to BBAU fans, I guess?! šŸ˜‚ The internet continues to astound me.
 
I remember the tension of eviction night. The live element of that contributed to the heart thumping, mind racing, soul shaking feeling as you waited for your favourite housemaid to learn his or her fate.

I remember Big Brother 2003 when on that first night Ben was all alone in the round house.
 
Im probably the most ill informed and knowlegable about all things BB on this site.
But for me, you vanquish a public vote till the end, spells the end for this premise as a spectacle.
In a microcosmic universe, its much easier to control your fate when you can control and gang up.
The public vote was always the intrinsic spoon.
You had to be dually aware. To your housemates and the public.
As it stands presently, its a bit of a fools shell game.
 
Although the success of Masterchef suggests otherwise it still annoys me Ten culled it after BB08. There was so much wrong with that series granted, but there was so much that could have been learned from it and I think a BB09 without Kyle would have had really potential.

Whilst without doubt the glory years ended after the 7th series, I do think the first couple of years were a decent effort from Nine - but the series just couldn't fly without not only a live stream, but a decent stream of live updates throughout the day. Sonia was such a poor choice of host for the Nine series too - but I do actually she fits better into the Seven format which requires the host to be colder, more Chenbot like.


For me as an international fan whose main interest in the early years was seeing what other versions were doing to twist things up without doubt the two house twist of BB03 has never been bettered, and never really repeated anywhere on that scale.
 
I do remember when it first started it was actually a mate of mine that was talking about this new "Big Brother" show which I never bothered to watch at all but because he kept talking about it all the time I thought maybe I should check this show out and see what it's all about...lol

I also remember many workplaces back in those early days where all talking about BB and what certain housemates had said or done in the house on the show the night before. It was all the buzz back then when it first started!

I guess for me I still remember how many great prizes the housemates received back in the 2004 season. Each housemate all received a new Mitsubishi Lancer vehicle to go with a handfull of other prizes they also received. Also that massive amount of 1 million dollars prize money for the winner on that year was amazing! I don't think you will ever see a reality type show ever giving the winner that sort of money again here in Australia.

Speaking of some old BBBA memories, I do remember the many photo shops done here by members back in 2012 when it went to channel 9 with the new host Sonia Kruger. There was quite a few Gretel verses Sonia pictures posted here back then...lol. It was like the battle of the old and new BB hosts...lol

Cheers! :)
 
2001 - In They Go
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2001 - Music Video
The iconic theme song in full with highlights of the first season. Everyone here has probably watched this video. Big Brother Australia was so popular the full length theme song was released as a CD single while the show was running. By 001 Productions the single peaked at #12 in July 2001 on the ARIA charts. There was actually 2 editions of the CD single released. Version 1 contained the theme song and a couple of remixes. It was then re-released with those tracks and the housemates written song for a weekly task ā€œThe Housemates Song (Donā€™t You Think That Itā€™s Strange)ā€ performed by Australian girl trio Sirens.
 
S1 was actual water-cooler TV. Like, literally at my workplace. At the time I'd moved into a house where Bigpond cable was available so watching the live streams was no problem.

So funny to look back at that house though. It really looked like an ordinary house. The DR looked like someone's spare bedroom. There was even a power point on the wall behind the chair.
 
Version 1 contained the theme song and a couple of remixes
The two remixes were heard on the show quite frequently during the first two seasons.

The first one, B.B. Uncut Mix usually played the last few seconds of the track when cutting to and from video packages during the eviction shows on top of some random house footage with the green filter on it to make it look like the show intro. It's probably a scrapped version of a theme for the show since its just essentially a re-creation of the original Dutch Big Brother theme. The second one, The Diary Room Mix is the track that played when the show returned from the ad break during an eviction show and the evictee met Gretel out the back and they then walked out on the stage.

I uploaded the uncompressed tracks ripped from the disc onto SoundCloud years ago if anyone wants to listen to these: soundcloud.com/user165716070/sets
 
I really enjoyed and miss the HYPE the earlier seasons would bring, particularly with live evictions. There was something so exciting about hearing the BB theme and the live crowd screaming in the background. Theres nothing that really compares to it on tv today
 
I really enjoyed and miss the HYPE the earlier seasons would bring, particularly with live evictions. There was something so exciting about hearing the BB theme and the live crowd screaming in the background. Theres nothing that really compares to it on tv today

Sport?
 
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