BB Australia!

[Amy]

Here's the latest on the show in Australia :thumbs:

Big Brother's back
By ADAM ZWAR and FIONA BYRNE
02may04

A FORMER AFL footballer, a belly dancer, a flirtatious one-time cheerleader, a massage therapist and a wanna-be rock star are about to move into loungerooms across the nation as part of the Big Brother class of 2004.

After weeks of hints, rumours and teasers, the 14 housemates taking part in the fourth series of Big Brother will be locked away in the show's Queensland compound tonight.
Notable among the assortment is former Sydney Swans and Adelaide Crows player Ryan Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald, 27, who retired at the end of the 2002 season, has described himself to show organisers as single, and as someone who has fallen in love several times but always wound up with a broken heart.

He was rumoured to have had a brief fling with model Kate Fischer when playing for Sydney.


Victoria will have two representatives, including Igor, a self-employed tiler. Igor, 27, described his Monaro as his most prized possession. Single and proud of his sexual prowess, he is the potential playboy of the house.

Victoria's other representative is Paul, 31, a married father of two who runs a building and plastering business.

This series marks the first time Big Brother has had housemates who have children. Paul will not be the only contestant saying goodbye to his children for up to three months.

Beautician and massage therapist Catherine, 33, is a single mother of two.

A romance between housemates could well be on the cards, with several single.

Belly dancer Aphrodite, 26, could cause friction in the house. Alternative, loud and opinionated, she could remind viewers of Andy from series one.

Terri, 31, a nurse, is described as desperately single and a serial dater.

Wanna-be rock god Merlin, 24, is single, but longs to find "the one".

Krystal, 20, works in women's fashion, is unattached and just wants to have a good time.

As in past years, there are housemates who are in relationships.

Ashalea, 19, is a former cheerleader who now works in a bar. Despite having a steady boyfriend, she has ominously revealed that flirting is one of her best talents.

Furniture storeman Trevor, 30, with his Guy Sebastian-style hair, could be the lovable character of the house.

Marketing co-ordinator Wesley, 20, shapes as the house's fitness fanatic, while Kane, 20, is an apprentice carpenter and DJ.

Perth girl Elle, 22, is leaving her boyfriend of eight years on the outside to seek adventure.

Finally there is Bree, 21, who works in radio promotions in Queensland.

More than 33,000 peo ple applied for the chance to join the house.

Article here (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9445495%255E2902,00.html)

[Amy]

A day with Big Brother
By ADAM ZWAR
02may04

ADAM ZWAR kept a diary when he was invited to test conditions in the new Big Brother house this week as the countdown began for the third series of the hit show

MONDAY 9AM: Enter house. New exterior is Mediterranean. Kitchen is 1970s kitsch as is the lounge area complete with dance floor. Bedroom is made up of six single beds and four doubles, all sitting on an orange shag-pile carpet.
Bathroom is bright pink. A camera stares down on you while you are on the loo. The good news is that it only gets turned on if you are suspected of doing something "interesting" in there. And, no, simply going to the toilet is not considered "interesting".

10AM TO 12PM: Chat idly by the pool. Wonder where the others have gone. Go in search.

12.15PM: "The others" are in the bedroom and have reserved themselves a bed. Those of us lazing by the pool have to negotiate to sleep in one of the three double beds with one of "the others".

The girl on the double bed closest asks if I have "boy-girl issues or boy-boy issues". Tell her that the gender of my bedmate doesn't bother me.

This is a lie. Although the double beds are wide (two single beds joined together) the idea of sharing a doona with a smelly bloke holds little appeal.

LUNCH: Big Brother announces that food has been left in the storeroom, located behind the kitchen. There is chicken, a leg of ham, bread and some salad. We make sandwiches and discuss the Logies.

2PM: Discover that a fellow housemate went to the same university as me. I talk disparagingly about one of the lecturers. She says she liked that lecturer. In fact, said lecturer is one of her best friends.

Apologise for indiscretion and ponder that if this was the real thing, it wouldn't take long for the Australian public to get sick of me. Imagine promos: "Adam the backstabber. Who will he bag tonight?"

3PM: Spend hour in the gym. Apart from making a sandwich, it is the only constructive thing I've done all day.

Have shower. No hot water. I think it's personal: "Big Brother wants to torment the journalist." Later, discover everyone's shower has been cold.

6PM: Lamb roast for dinner. One of the male housemates cooks it. He's a big bloke with tats. Does a fine job, too. There's beer and wine to go with it. After dinner, Big Brother announces the hot water has been turned on and orders the girls to shower. This gives the lads a chance to talk.

Apart from me, all the guys are single, while most of the girls are in relationships. The guys are frustrated by the imbalance, but I suggest they not lose hope. They counter that three days is too short a time to convince any of the girls to have a fling, then proceed to talk about each of the "fairer sex" in glorious detail. Later, executive producer Kris Noble will tell me that this made the best television of the day.

"We were able to cut between you guys talking about the girls and the girls in the shower. Maybe it was too spicy. But it was great TV," he says.

7PM TO 9PM: More great television as a beer-fuelled housemate considers long-jumping across the 4.5m-wide pool. He does a few warm-up jumps before being called to the diary room and scolded.

9PM TO 10.30PM: Big Brother presents us with a list of discussion topics.

They range from "The Strangest Place You've Had Sex" to "Does Size Matter?" Most housemates think size matters and a church is the strangest place of copulation.

After a request to ponder the attractiveness of body hair, Big Brother called an end to the game. Music starts pumping and the dance floor lights up. Some go for a boogie while the rest sit on the couch and freak each other out with ghost stories.

BEDTIME: 11.30PM. After drawn-out negotiations, I land the worst bed. It's next to the air conditioner. At least I didn't have to sleep with a bloke. I got the girl because I was married. She said she felt safe with me.

Big Brother locks the door to the bedroom. No way to get out. A couple of revellers continue to party in the pink bathroom. Put jumper over head to protect self from air conditioner as well as party.

TUESDAY: Awake when the fluoros are turned on.

"This is Big Brother. Adam, please make your way to the diary room." I'm ordered to collect my bag and return do the diary room straight away. Some want to know what I'm up to. Tell them I'm taking my bag to the diary room and will be "back in a minute". But I never go back. There was some jangling of keys, a door opened and I was ushered into the free world. No goodbyes, nothing. The others still had another night to go.

Memo to the real housemates: Grab a bed as soon as possible. The best beds are the singles either end of the room.

Forget about escaping. The walls are designed so they are extremely hard to climb over. And if you do get over, there's another fence to negotiate.


http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,1658,340829,00.jpg

Article here (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,9444075%255E2902,00.html)

[Di2001]

And here's another article:

BB secret revealed
May 2, 2004

The secret is out - the 2004 winner of reality TV hit Big Brother will take home $1 million, instead of the $250,000 the previous three winners have earned.

The 14 new housemates were unveiled on Sunday night and face up to 85 days in complete isolation from the rest of the world.

"The housemates don't know and with that much money at stake we are really interested to see how that affects the way people vote," host Gretel Killeen said.

"It will be very interesting if at any time the housemates find out and to see if it will drastically affect their behaviour in the house.

"But at the moment it is completely secret and we have no immediate plans to tell the housemates."

This year's troupe includes a retired AFL player, a former cheerleader and model, a furniture storeman, a nurse and a self-employed tiler.

The 14 will have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world but their every move and sound will be recorded by 36 cameras and 52 hidden microphones.

"We have got a great group of housemates, lots of diverse characters, lots of diverse life experiences as well and lots of different energy levels which I think is always an interesting thing to throw into the mix," Killeen said.

The past month has seen numerous rumours emerge about the fourth series of Big Brother. Rumours included that one of the housemates would be pregnant and that one of the contestants was a monkey.

Another rumour was that American celebrity Paris Hilton, who is filming her first movie - House Of Wax - on the Gold Coast, would be an intruder.

Hilton's Australian spokesman said he "knew nothing about it".

Asked what it took to be a Big Brother housemate, Killeen said contestants needed to have a certain degree of self confidence.

"Probably a fair degree of adventurous spirit because you are really throwing yourself in," she said.

"To do well out of the Big Brother experience I think you really have to be open to it as a really positive challenge because it is massive both inside and when you come out of the house."

Previous Big Brother winners were Regina Bird from Tasmania, Ben Williams of Sydney and Wollongong's Peter Corbett.

Despite the recent spate of low rating reality TV shows, including Ten's The Resort and The Hothouse, Killeen is confident Big Brother will be a success.

She said the show contained an ingredient other reality programs didn't.

"I think that is the purity of the concept and I think the cast is great and I really get the feeling that the Australian public is looking forward to this series."


:shocked: $1,000,000 prize money!!!!!

[Amy]

Remember folks the live streaming on BBA is free, all they ask is that you join the website!! Click here for BBA website (http://bigbrother.ten.com.au/default.asp)

[Amy]

Has anyone managed to watch the Live Streaming yet?? I've had no joy at all! The page either times out or comes up with an error message http://www.cheesebuerger.de/smilies/verbluefft/65.gif

[Amy]

Thanks to a member on Digitalspy :thumbs: this is how you get to watch the live streaming....

if people are having trouble viewing the feeds then

1) Open RealPlayer 10 (or download if you havent)
2) Log in to the official big brother australia site using RealPlayer 10's web browser.
3) Once logged in, click on 'Live Cam' and choose HI or LO.
4) Wait a while and it should load up!
5) Then Just Watch Live Streaming

[Di2001]

Originally posted by Amy
Thanks to a member on Digitalspy :thumbs: this is how you get to watch the live streaming....

if people are having trouble viewing the feeds then

1) Open RealPlayer 10 (or download if you havent)
2) Log in to the official big brother australia site using RealPlayer 10's web browser.
3) Once logged in, click on 'Live Cam' and choose HI or LO.
4) Wait a while and it should load up!
5) Then Just Watch Live Streaming

Thanks for this Amy. Will give it a go sometime :thumbs:

[Di2001]

Well, I got it to work!!!

Been watching some girlie doing sit ups and a bloke walking around bare chested!!! :laugh:

[Amy]

Originally posted by Di2001
Well, I got it to work!!!

Been watching some girlie doing sit ups and a bloke walking around bare chested!!! :laugh:

Glad you managed to get it to work Di :thumbs: I only watched a small part yesterday and they all were very loud and a bit tipsy :laugh:

Anyway, it looks like the show is doing very well in Aus according to this article...

1.5 million watch Big Brother 4

Asked last week to predict the audience for Big Brother 4, Channel Ten's program director, David Mott, said he'd be happy if the weekday episodes averaged 1 million viewers and the Sunday night show averaged 1.5 million.

By setting the bar so low, Mr Mott can now boast he has the most successful reality show of the year so far.

On Sunday, the debut of Big Brother 4 attracted 1.7 million viewers in the mainland capitals - more than half of whom were in Ten's target 16 to 39-year-old age group. This was half a million fewer than the opening episode of 2003, but 300,000 ahead of Nine's The Block, which did better than Big Brother last year.

Despite a sub-plot about a contestant who had been jailed as an accessory to drug dealing, episode three of The Block 2 was 37 per cent down on last year, beaten by an ancient documentary about New Zealand on Seven.

At 7.30pm, Seven was delighted that its reality show My Restaurant Rules, with 1.1 million viewers, survived the disappearance of its Sydney contestants the previous week and the onslaught of Big Brother.

But at 8.30, Seven's night fell apart: its makeover show Ultimate Transformations Live managed only 900,000.

Ten was thrilled that Big Brother 4 exceeded its hopes, which had been diminished by the failure of The HotHouse and The Resort, and by the slump of The Block. Asked why The Block wasn't working, Mr Mott said it lacked the element of surprise. "Nine's promotion just said 'The Block is back'," he said. "They should have come up with another hook, another angle.

"We're saying 'Big Brother is back - plus'. The 'plus' is what's going to get the viewers. You need to have things up your sleeve, secrets, a new house . . ."

As it turned out on Sunday, Big Brother's first big secret was simply that the prizemoney had risen from $250,000 to $1 million - which the contestants inside the house don't know yet.

This may not be enough of a plus to hold the fickle under-40 audience which Ten is seeking.

Sunday night suggested renovation and humiliation don't attract Australians any longer, but there may be some mileage left in claustrophobia - and there's a potential new audience for New Zealand history.

If the weekday episodes of Big Brother fail to reach his minimum expectation of a million viewers, Mr Mott may decide his house needs a pet kiwi.

article here (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/03/1083436548527.html)