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Why Big Brother is fast becoming a paradox on Nine

No Live feeds? The whole point is we're supposed to be able to watch 24/7. Is Nine afraid of its own TV show?

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Fans of Big Brother are pleading with Nine to offer Live Feeds online from the House.

Social media forums have lit up with requests for the live feeds since the show began, but Nine is refusing to budge.

Having one hour edited episodes on TV is proving too limited for dedicated fans and Nine is at risk of alienating the core audience it needs to support the show.

Instead it is offering a lightweight Twitter feed with such dazzling updates as:

18:49: Estelle says, “I’m falling asleep right now” to Josh. But they both still find the energy to schmooze some more…

20:48: “It’s been a hard day for me” Stacey continues. “Awww, why?” Angie asks. “I’ve just been so slugging” Stacey responds.

22:03: “You were bowling that quick today” Ryan says, complimenting Josh on his bowling during the cricket game.

23:13: The HMs are separated; girls in the Parlour and boys in the Kitchen. What are they talking about? Stay tuned, that is all for tonight.

Rivetting stuff.

Nine’s dilemma is that it is terrified live feeds to the House would undermine its “family friendly” season, because viewers would access more adult conversations and behaviour. If the show is written off as another year of boozy, randy housemates, Nine won’t enjoy any longevity with the brand.

Yet the decision to limit access is a paradox to the entire mantra of Big Brother.

The whole point of the show, indeed the title spells it out, is that we are watching people under the microscope.

We’re not supposed to be watching 42 edited minutes.

The Daily Show should be a catch-up summary for a broad audience. The fans should be having around the clock access to this most social of experiments.

Not having a full Daily Show until Wednesday has also impacted on our ability to see relationships forming at a crucial stage. Ratings are already slipping.

Ironically, we had online access ten years ago when we were all on dial-up. Now with high-speed broadband in most homes, and NBN rolling out across the country, we’ve actually gone backwards.

Nine should at least meet the fans half-way by adding an UpLate show with Mike Goldman, pronto.

I’m beginning to wonder if Nine is afraid of the very brand it has acquired….

54 Responses

  1. Dayman – context is the key word there. The live feeds put the daily shows into context, and while the daily shows may have the highlights, it’s the live feed which has the build up and the aftermath of the key events in the house – and often picks up potential grudges and showmances weeks ahead of such feelings boiling to the surface and earning a place on the daily show.

  2. What also is silly, is on sunday there’s a 30min daily show on Go! before the secrets special on Nine. 30 mins will be about 20-22 minutes of content. For about 48 hours of time in the house. that 0.76% of the time we shall see. Even if you remove 16 hours for sleep. it’s still 1.14% of the time.

    It’s against the very notion of BB. In fact the nothing clips which no context on the official site from this period already come for longer than this daily show will be. So things that have been hinted at there. It’ll be impossible they’ll get the full context and addressed on the daily show. Even Nine’s promo for friday’s show, didn’t feature the much hyped, “Bradley Appologises.”

    So they’re holding stuff off the official site. Giving us hints. Promoing things to happen. Yet have too much content and so it all just disappears. The problem is, if this series fails. We’ll never know if it was because Nine dropped the ball with no live streaming and uplate. Or not. Even if in a months times the ratings are poor. They may rush to do it, but i’ll be too late as people turned off probably won’t turn back on.

    In this age of fast online internet, multi-casting. BB only makes sense if you use this. I thought there was talk of an extended dailyshow on Go every night at 9pm. Something as simple as that would do a whole lot to get people into the show more. Even if they streamed Up Late on the net 9-12 with Mike Goldman, that’d be great!

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