🌐 International BB - General news

Obviously only viewing from afar and mainly via the information you provide plus snippets on bbfun.de but the more basic house is arguably a benefit of budget cuts rather than a curse, though perhaps taken a bit too far.

Is crazy though how short the series is now given it was pretty much year round in the mid-noughties. How do German fans view the Sat.1 tenure compared to RTL?
 
People definitely prefer the RTL run to the Sat.1 one.. to this day, people refer to the year-long season 5 as the best season ever. Personally, I don't think so.. because I think a lot of the later issues started on this season with some quite obvious manipulations. Sascha wouldn't have won the season without help from production. But production value glossed over it. But people love the extreme divide in the house and the huge competitions, sometimes even outside the house, when people had to climb glaciers or whatever. And whenever you ask people what Sat.1 needs to fix, the answer is always: being closer to that season.

That said though: I think most people would agree that this year's divide didn't work at all. But that was coming down to the concert. Initially they only had two people in the rich house and didn't give them anything for entertainment. So you wouldn't get any content and people would be excited to move back to the brick shell. They've later changed it that more people lived there (despite there being only one bed) and people always moving back after a day, but the isolation is just not working out. It might have worked better with a shared fence.

It's a bit weird that they didn't see that fail coming... it happened on the village season as well, when initially only three people lived in the rich house. Besides, the number one reason to nominate somebody in Germany is "I had the least conversations with them." So I expect a lot of housemates didn't want to be removed from the group for too long so that they wouldn't end up being nominated.

Speaking of nominations: There has been absolutely no format this year and they've changed the rules daily. I think German fans didn't mind it so much in the past and I would still think that a lot of them don't see the issues with not having a proper concept for nominations. But this year I've read a lot more comments about nominations being a bit pointless with them being so random, which makes me happy. It's been really, really bad this year.

Generally though, people liked this season more than the previous two seasons.. people especially liked this year's cast a lot. I personally enjoyed that they didn't try and tell another pre-existing broken love story like the other two years when they had exes in the house and then forced them to talk things out. People also liked that it looked visually better on TV and that housemates were able to spread out more and had more areas they could retreat to and have private conversations. That helped with the live feeds, I think people enjoyed them a lot this year.

People want Sat.1 to improve their live shows though. Common criticism that I've read is that live competitions were too boring (although I think people are a bit too harsh. While not perfect, this year's games were a lot better than previous years), that the daily show bits are just different clips thrown together and that they have to over-explain stuff on the live shows all the time (e.g. Big Brother explains the rules for the shopping bit every single day).

A bit surprising to me is that people seem to be a bit divided on the hosts. I think they are the most annoying parts of the show. Not because they are bad hosts but the way they are made to host the show. Sat.1 and Endemol want the show to be a bit more like I'm a Celebrity, which has superbly written and some (for German television) highbrow jokes. There was a time when some artsy people or journalists claimed to only watch the jokes for the hosts. Sat.1 always failed at replicating that because they couldn't find good writers. And I guess their solution was to keep comedy but making it a bit more slapstick. But them trying to recreate arguments from the house or whatever is extremely cringe.

As for the back-to-basic approach with the portakabins: People were happy that they left the portakabins. I think they would have gotten away with it again this year, if they hadn't used the same layout for two celebrity seasons plus two civilian seasons (plus two very-short influencer events). Ratings this year were higher, but they were not significantly higher.

It might have been more of an issue for the civilian seasons than the celebrity seasons. People like the 2023 cast and most think that production ruined the cast because of the setting. There were basically three spots in the house: The table outside, the living room, the bed room. So you people all sitting together, being bored, don't have a lot to entertain themselves, might be hungry because of basic rations and thus not really energetic. Those have been one of the main issues voiced with last year's civilian season and that didn't work out for 100 days.


Personally, I think the show needs a bit of a creative refresh.. not having a budget is one thing. But you can still do entertaining stuff without a budget. A lot of the memorable tasks from international BB didn't have a huge budget. But they don't have anyone in Germany that could come up with simple stuff that is exciting. A lot of other reality shows make use of ideas from the BB universe, including some that don't really cost money. And the best German Big Brother could do for this year's civilian series was throwing celebrities in that you see in at least one reality show per year and having people cut grass with a pair of nail scissors.
 
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Thanks for that extensive review - really interesting read. I guess in many ways Promi Big Brother is more of a spin off than a continuation but it's a shame really the few attempts to do a civilian series since the focus became the celebrity one just haven't really taken off.

I've always had a soft spot for BB Germany though ever since their first series of Big Brother: The Battle. Loved it when TV had ambition to do a year long series (or even never ending series, as the series the begin immediately after it was billed!), but even when they scaled it back it was still 150+ days and still quite different to other versions.
 
I would assume that the first season might enjoy some success because it's the first one. But I can't see it lasting for very long with the Argentinian version airing as well. Their last two seasons aired from December to late June/early July. I guess they'll keep a similar schedule for next year, which is why Uruguay will launch theirs in August. But then they'll have Big Brother on TV around the year, which won't work long-term. Chile has done the same and their second season struggled a lot and thus has been their final season for now.
 
Had a chance to catch-up with the new Spanish season, which launched a couple of days ago (after having an online pre-selection special before the official launch).

The house is quite notable.. for one, because it marks a new area for the Spanish program. They've used the same building from 2001 (e.g. their second season) till March of this year and filmed all of the various spin-offs in the house.

It's the first time that they are in the new house, which follows a few international trends. Its size is enormous.. and it's not having a proper roof either. That's what I meant in one of the other threads that 10 might have not have given their house a roof even if they were in a purpose-built house.

I think it looks especially bad for Gran Hermano, because I've seen a lot of images that look like this: Roof over the seating area, but nothing behind it.

G5WU7cxWsAAL-8Z.jpeg

You can see the diary room in teh background of this image and the walls are transparent, but they can turn them milky (like the temptation screen on BBAU or the toilet on Channel4's 5 series, I think).

It's not the best clip to show it off.. but you can see the host sitting in the diary room from the outside and when they cut to him, you can see the opaque walls.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1986539002896187749

For a better tour of the house, you might check out this video (but make sure to set your VPN to Spain):
www.telecinco.es

Jorge Javier VĂĄzquez inaugura la nueva casa de 'Gran Hermano 20' y desvela algunos de sus secretos: "Te has 'SĂșper-ado'"

El gran estreno de ' Gran Hermano 20 ' aterriza en Telecinco, lo que significa que la cuenta atrĂĄs llega a su fin y la ansiada espera termina con la
www.telecinco.es www.telecinco.es

Otherwise: No nominations for now, everyone is up for eviction unless they live in the bird cage in the garden (and have to wear bird costumes).. or if they are in the oasis, with some of them being fake-evicted there. Which is basically like the other house/house next door from the UK... where they can spy on the housemates and might have to do tasks (like stealing panties)

And they start to use AI... right now it just catalogs the content, but they want to use it in the future to make the daily shows more timely.
 
So as mentioned in the main forum Big Brother Celebrites returns tonight in Quebec for it's sixth season. Seems to perform very well for them and I enjoyed Coco on The Traitors Canada. House looks great but couldn't see the contestants had been announced.

www.instagram.com

BIG BROTHER CÉLÉBRITÉS ✹ on Instagram: "Les cĂ©lĂ©britĂ©s feront leur entrĂ©e ce dimanche dans la maison de Big Brother, saison 6 ✹ On n’est pas peu fiers de les accueillir dans ce dĂ©cor. Quelle est votre piĂšce prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©e? 💙 Ne manquez pas la grande p

2,938 likes, 57 comments - bigbrothercelebrites on January 9, 2026: "Les cĂ©lĂ©britĂ©s feront leur entrĂ©e ce dimanche dans la maison de Big Brother, saison 6 ✹ On n’est pas peu fiers de les accueillir dans ce dĂ©cor. Quelle est votre piĂšce prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©e? 💙 Ne manquez pas la grande premiĂšre de la saison...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

I assume Big Brother Brasil is also due to return anytime - it usually launches mid-January.
 
Brekkie said:
So as mentioned in the main forum Big Brother Celebrites returns tonight in Quebec for it's sixth season. Seems to perform very well for them and I enjoyed Coco on The Traitors Canada. House looks great but couldn't see the contestants had been announced.

www.instagram.com

BIG BROTHER CÉLÉBRITÉS ✹ on Instagram: "Les cĂ©lĂ©britĂ©s feront leur entrĂ©e ce dimanche dans la maison de Big Brother, saison 6 ✹ On n’est pas peu fiers de les accueillir dans ce dĂ©cor. Quelle est votre piĂšce prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©e? 💙 Ne manquez pas la grande p

2,938 likes, 57 comments - bigbrothercelebrites on January 9, 2026: "Les cĂ©lĂ©britĂ©s feront leur entrĂ©e ce dimanche dans la maison de Big Brother, saison 6 ✹ On n’est pas peu fiers de les accueillir dans ce dĂ©cor. Quelle est votre piĂšce prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©e? 💙 Ne manquez pas la grande premiĂšre de la saison...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

I assume Big Brother Brasil is also due to return anytime - it usually launches mid-January.
Click to expand...
Kind of wish I spoke French just to see how their version compares. Also wish that Bell Media would pick up Big Brother Canada at some point.

As far as I know BB CĂ©lĂ©britĂ©s doesn’t have live feeds (unsure why) but surely having the English live feed behind a paywall on their streaming service Crave would hopefully make it easier for them to justify reviving them.

Not to mention if the show was a Crave Exclusive making them less reliant on sponsors by brining in an additional source of revenue.
 
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