Ideas Made Well

This week, there is more anticipation in the air than there is oxygen.

The World Cup starting on Friday is the event that dominates all the news bulletins and much of the pub chat (except in Scotland of course). The Isle of Wight festival also starts this Friday and as most football fans would testify is as good a place as any to watch the World Cup. Wimbledon is just around the corner, and with Andy Murray, represents another opportunity to demonstrate national pride (particularly in Scotland), but conversely is a rubbish place to watch the World Cup.

But the other big thing happening this week is of course Big Brother. It’s not as big as it used to be of course, and its top of mind saliency has diminished considerably from the days when the tabloids each vied with each other to be the ‘official’ Big Brother paper and ran multi-page special pull-outs, reflecting the enormous interest in watching ‘not a lot’ happen.

This series of Big Brother will be different from all the ones that have preceded it, if only because it will be the last ever one.

Whether the audience floods back to historic levels seems unlikely given the competition, but the last ever Celebrity Big Brother earlier in the year performed particularly well in terms of viewers.
Channel 4 have been brave to cut it as it produced so much revenue for the channel, allowing it to fill huge quantities of its schedule with very low cost programming. “Everything has a shelf life and Big Brother had become very tired”. Whilst this is true to a certain degree, it is also true that no one is forecasting the demise of the World Cup or Wimbledon or Glastonbury. These ‘formats’ have stayed pretty similar since they began, yet they go from strength to strength.

Could ‘Big Brother’ have escaped the axe and maintained its mojo?
When they changed it a bit, to keep it fresh, the true Big Brother devotees screamed in horror. Others barely noticed the difference, and over time became bored with the format. The web played its part by providing all sorts of similar content, that meant that Big Brother lost its point of distinction in the last few years, such that most people will be unaffected by its passing.

The big launch tonight will be treated with derision by many, focussing on the collection of weirdos who will make up the contestants. Yet, this undervalues the impact Big Brother had on television and also, not to be dramatic, but on society.

The idea of Big Brother was far bigger than voyeurism. The irony of ‘Jadegate’, which led to Channel 4 being censured, was that the issue of racism was discussed more than a lifetime of Panoramas would have achieved. This was Big Brother’s great strength, the ability to let a set of ordinary people talk – or shout – about everyday issues in an entertainment format that was real. There are many copy-cat formats, which have become less and less real and the issues have become somewhat less interesting: who fancies who on a desert island is not exactly that compelling.

Channel 4’s editorial team were well and truly castrated post ‘Jadegate’ and Big Brother was never the same again.
Big Eunuch was unlikely to be a ratings winner, so we will need to wait for the next big thing.Let’s hope it makes as large (see I know when to stop stretching the pun) an impact as its predecessor.