Dear Ben Frow,
I am writing to you about the current state of Big Brother UK and how I genuinely fear for its future on our television screens. I am just going to outline some of the issues and how they could be improved below, and hopefully you can take some of this on board and see a ratings success in future.
You NEED to Know and Understand your Viewing Audience.
The Viewing Audience now is not the same as the Love Island Audience and although a few of the younger generation watch it, a lot of the older, hardcore fans also watch but are switching off because it is targeted towards the wrong people. It now strays from the ‘Social Experiment’ it once used to be due to the casting choices and is now a Love Island/Ex on the Beach hybrid which is not what the fans want.
The Scheduling is All Over the Place
This year in particular, the scheduling is all over the place and it's causing fans to get confused about when they can watch the show. For example, the launch was not only on the same night as Love Island which was a massive mistake, but it was going against Coronation Street, just one of ITV’s flagship soaps. This put the first nail in the coffin for BB18, in my opinion. Then, as well as this, the 10PM showings are too late for many fans and although a good choice in terms of Love Island Clashing, it's too late. And finally, moving the evictions to Thursdays, and now Fridays at 10PM in favour of Paul O’Grady Documentaries and Legally Blonde of all films is a horrendous choice and makes the fans lose faith in the show. When this happens, us fans feel like you don't care about the show anymore.
Let's discuss how this could be fixed then. The first way of doing this is launching the show at least two weeks before Love Island and air it consistently at 9PM each night, and have a good two weeks on quality entertainment which encapsulates all that I am about to mention. The other way of doing this is moving Civilian BB to the Late January - Late March spot, and keeping the Celebrity for the summer. This way Civvy BB has no direct competition and is something for people to watch on the cold nights, and Celeb BB will be more relevant for people to tune into in the summer.
The Casts (Civilian)
The Casts are becoming downright appalling and they get worse every year. The public want to see more of your Raph, Hannah and Deborah, Charlotte and Mandy, Sue, Andrew types - the ones who are unique and you don't see often as compared to the Ellie, Sam, Lotan, Tom and Kayleigh (who, let's remember, compared the Show to an EOTB reunion) who are on TV often and should acuptually, by profession, be on CBB but more on that later.
So, how could this be improved. Scour the country in OPEN AUDITIONS and visit major cities like London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Glasgow, Dublin, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and the list goes on. It also ensures your casts are unique, interesting and don't originate from agencies.
The Tired Format
We all know the format is tired; from the lack of secret DR Nominations to the same tasks and twists. It needs shaking up, and not with something like The Others (that was great in principle) that lasts two weeks before being scrapped.
What would be an interesting shakeup is if you took at look at the USA web series; Big Brother Over the Top (BB:OTT for short). It has the brand new format (HOH, POV, House Eviction etc) but it allows the public to remain involved as they can name one of the three nominees, they can cast one of the votes to evict (the votes are tallied and the person with the most gets the vote), they can name the Have-Nots (a number of housemates (usually 3-4) who must live on slop for the week) and they can choose someone to have a Care Package (a Package delivered to one housemate each week that can help their game). It'd bring in much more revenue to give you more money for the shows quality.
Shopping Tasks are Losing Importance
The Shopping Tasks no longer have any importance. They aren't the unique games that used to take place, and now it's even harder to tell the difference between a Luxury and a Basic Shopping Budget especially now we don't see them writing the lists like we used to.
Live Feed
Live Feed would be a god send to all of the fans - allowing us to see what they're doing outside of the 45 minute Highlights and something to watch when it isn't on. If you wanted to bring this into more revenue, then you could offer a subscription service like BBUSA which asks for a small monthly fee to have complete access over feeds - and this could also include rewards to the fans like 5 free votes for watching a certain amount of feeds, or giving them excluding clips of audition tapes etc.
The Celebrity Series
The final issue I'm here to raise is the Celebrity Series, the casts more importantly. They now include 85% Z-List Reality TV Stars which isn't what we want to see. This could be improved by cutting the CBB to one slightly longer series in the summer and keeping Civilian BB to January-March. I can even prove how much Better the casts would be - as I looked back over 2016 and merged the casts together to make a more famous, well-rounded cast. Here is what I got;
Stephanie Davis
Darren Day
Daniela Westbrook
Gemma Collins
John Partridge
Christopher Maloney
Kristina Rihannoff
Angie Bowie
David Gest
Ricky Norwood
Aubrey O’Day
Samantha Fox
James Whale
Saira Khan
Christopher Biggins
Now there you have the perfect cast with a mix of ages, a few RTV stars to appeal to the remaining young fans, and some Media Legends. This has to be the perfect proof to my point.
Here I conclude this e-mail, and thank you for taking the time for reading it. I really hope I can get a response from you because I'd really genuinely love Big Brother to continue for much longer.
Yours sincerely,
Morgan (EDITED OUT MY SIRNAME), a diehard International BB fan
