Celebrity Big Brother has just returned to our screens, but it is the Big Brother phenomena that I wish to look at. Launched in the summer of 2000 in the
United Kingdom, Big Brother promised us live coverage 24 hours a day of its contestants held within a house surrounded by cameras. Once again nothing like this had ever been done before and it didn’t disappoint. Online streaming, although limited and of relatively low quality, followed the contestants, ordinary members of the public, everywhere!!! This type of voyeurism was picked up by the general public who couldn’t get enough. Subsequently there have been eight planned returns of Big Brother and five of its Celebrity Big Brother counterpart.
Streaming has gone from live free coverage to pay per view online, but can still be watched from 6am-2pm on E4 live (with a fifteen minute delay) and from midnight to 6am on CH4. Although there are issues of ethics and morals, and one Big Brother season ended up in police involvement, while others see people break down and leave in all manners of ways, the show has continued due to its audience ratings. The latest Big Brother raised issues of racism which became a world debate. The online forums allowed this debate to continue between the audiences of the world and brought online communities together. This notion of a dialogue after the show is over is an online version of having a chat with your friend after a film, but with people your barely know.
The Internet site itself contains profiles of housemates, audition tapes, free clips, forums, galleries, podcasts and regular updates. It is a basic site to navigate around, but its main feature in the early stages was its online streaming. Reality TV at its best? Arguably it is edited so that story and content can be created and moulded but it is reality TV at its most basic form.
Reality always comes across in documentary even though to an extent the elements of a documentary are planned. I have no intention of doing any kind of live streaming on a continuous basis, although it is a very interesting concept. Other shows of the reality nature have come and gone including Channel 4’s The Games, Channel 5’s Jail Break and ITV’s Love Island.
