Need More Strategic Housemates
 

Thoughts?

Yes, but to entice people to be more strategic you need a more strategic format. It's time to implement the US one and stop the public ruining the show.

Wouldnt make sense with vte and vtw. The people who arent playing the games will get more fans.

Ive never seen the us show but i dont understand the point in watching if viewers get zero say. Might as well watch towie?

Not at all, TOWIE's a scripted docusoap while BBUS is a genuine reality show (albeit with some manipulation from the awful exec producer) that hell, even has 24/7 live feed.

There's so many reasons to watch because the viewers get no say. Firstly, the viewers largely know nothing and actually ruin programmes like these. Secondly, having no public interference makes succeeding in the game more difficult because you get as far as you do on your own merit, rather than whether or not you can win the public over (which isn't that difficult, just be nice) and lastly, I actually go so far as to argue that public involvement in shows like this makes them unreal and that it's more of a reality show the less public involvement it has. Think about it, if you leave the contestants to their own devices and let things play out that's far more pure and ~real~ and is as far away from outside contact as you can get, whereas once you start letting the public control what goes on people start altering their behaviour and it takes away from the reality aspect of it.

It's more interesting to watch, it's more fair (again, trying to win the people you're living with over is far more difficult than the public) and it's more real.

You should try it.

No i get that you think the public ruins the uk version but i still dont understand how a show without a public vote would work. The winner is the person who wins a task? Sounds dumb?

America is a massive country ....no way channel 5 cud stand the expense of a show thats on every night for 2 months without the public paying to vote
i think they should stop calling them house mates, they're not mates...they should call them game players...and ask the public who they think has been the best game player each week...instead of who do you think is your favourite mate...maybe, just maybe, the idiots who keep robbing us of the best game players will finally start to understand the actual concept of the show......and stop sending outsiders in so than came tell Rylan who they think is NICE

Easily and effectively. No it's not like that :laugh:

There's a competition each week to determine a Head of Household (HoH), this can either be mental/physical or endurance. That person then nominates two other people for potential eviction.

The two nominees, the HoH and three other people selected by a random draw then compete in the Power of Veto (PoV) competition. Whoever wins earns the right to veto one of the HoH's nominations, or to leave them in tact. So if a nominee wins, they can remove themselves from the block, if the HoH wins, they can change one of their nominations or leave them the same. If a nominee is saved, the HoH has to name a replacement nominee.

Then on eviction night, every person other than the two nominees and the HoH goes into the DR and casts a vote to evict one of the two. In the event of a tie, the HoH breaks it.

When two people are left, the last 7 or 9 people evicted (whom have moved into a 'jury house' which is located somewhere in the country and isolated from the outside world) return, question the two finalists on why they believe they should win, and then each cast a vote for the winner. And that's it.

Winning over a jury is far more difficult than winning over the public, and also more fairer. They've lived with them, not the viewers.

I've never watched BBUSA but I've watched all three seasons of BBCanada and its infinitely better than BBUK. :love: I love the format, it's much more interesting to watch imo. Unfortunately strategic players are looked down upon in the UK for being 'game players' which is most bizarre as the show is, in fact, a game. :laugh:

Big Brother in the US airs three nights a week but they have live feed, and it works pretty well. The episodes just consolidate what you already know and show you the competitions.

They will never scrap the public vote entirely but there's ways to incorporate a more strategic format as well as giving the public some influence but without a direct affect on who is evicted. Just have the HoH nominate three people, the public can vote to save (key word) one of them post-Veto, and then the housemates can vote to evict as normal. It would actually add an extra element to the game because the HoH would run the risk of nominating a big target, the public saving them and then that person going after the person who nommed them.

Then give the public one of the jury votes and you're sorted. They can still have a public vote, just in a different manner.

I think the public voting to evict/save needs to stay, that's something that should never be removed.

Although we could do with more things than noms in a week. There could be a HOH task on Sunday nights for one HM to win. The person who wins can then have a HOH room where there is live feed for them, and they could have a the power to automatically put one or two HMs up for eviction, in addition to this they can treat and punish housemates throughout the week. Then there could be a task Wednesday nights where the nominated HMs fight to save themselves from being put up for eviction (then open lines straight after).

The whole constant weekly twists and manipulation thing isn't working for Big Brother so I think taking some things from BBUS while not fully Americanising the show could work far better.

So the weeks could be structured as:
Sunday - HOH task
Monday - HOH nominates plus punishments for HMs decided by HOH
Tuesday - Remaining housemates nominate
Wednesday - Task for nominated HMs, one person to save themselves
Thursday - HOH gives chosen HMs treats
Friday - Eviction
Saturday - Highlights with no major events

All of the above events with the exception of Friday's show (which is live) would happen the previous day so it's ready for the highlights.

I think this would work far better for BBUK, then there can be less twists. Plus with this they could allow noms talks which would also create more of an interesting dynamic between HMs. I know people aren't keen on the games how format of Big Brother although it's the way forward.

Thanks for all that, ive got to be honest though, it doesnt appeal to me. I cant imagine how infuriating it must be when a person the majority of the public dislike ends up winning? Or how awful it must be when the fan favourite leaves just because the house voted them out. The public vote wont always go your way but it will go to the voting publics way and that sounds like a better way to determine an evictee and a winner to me tbh

And in reply to the op :laugh: i think more tasks with strategy will be pretty fun to watch, but i dont think the public would take well to an openly strategic game player so i cant imagine it ever happening for too long without producer manipulation and we get too much of that already

I don't think there needs to be any tinkering with the format. When they were allowed to discuss noms in BB13 it was painful, so I really don't trust this show and the HMs it casts to create something good from this format. And, like, I watch BBUS and BBUK for different reasons and there's no need to make one any more similar to the other.

Definitely not :umm2: I mean some strategy is alright but the main reason I watch BBUK is for messy housemates and strategic housemates do not fall in that category.

I completely agree, i dont really mind what happens throughout the week but getting rid of this would be terrible imo.

I don't like the US format much tbh. It's okay in it's own show but I would probably stop watching BBUK if it switched to that. It's been the same for 15 years and shouldn't change now imo

In all honesty it doesn't really happen that often, I know Troy will probably appear and say otherwise (:laugh:) but by and large the people that win are liked by viewers or if not the majority of them can accept that they played well enough to deserve to win, because the mindset of US viewers is different where it genuinely is a game and backstabbing and all that is part and parcel of the show. And also a lot of the time the people that in the UK house would be detested and evicted early don't always last that long in the US either. Because think about it, if the housemates are in control, you're gonna want to get the annoying people out early before you start targeting actual threats.

Sometimes your favourites do leave before you want them to, but when that happens it's (mostly) because of their own doing. As I said, how far you do or don't get is based upon merit and how well you've played in what is essentially a social game. If you get evicted, as a fan you just have to accept that they didn't play well enough. A game is a game, you win some, you lose some.

I would be ok with having the BBUS format throughout the week like the HOH, PoV etc (but keep the shopping task, I hate the have/have not system) and then at the end of the week once nomination are in place then a public vote to decide who goes, a bit like James said above. I just reckon the show needs a bit of a change now, all these silly face to face noms and pointless twists week in week out just to try and get enough footage to compose the highlights episodes are getting a bit boring to me, it could do with a shake up. Making the show a little more strategic like the game show it ultimately is could do it some good.

It doesnt sound like a terrible idea for the show but i like the bbuk format far much more. The housemates, the nominations and the public evictions are to me, what makes the show great. Channel 5 have already basically scrapped the great housemates and the normal nominations but im still here for the public evictions! I might watch a bbus series one time, but it wouldnt seem like big brother.. The two seem completely different. Does the 'big brother is always watching you' reference even work when theyre not being judged by the public considering there would be no difference if they werent watching?

The problem is though that if you're going to let the public have the ultimate say in deciding who gets evicted then implementing the rest of the process is essentially pointless, you can't play a game if people on the outside are deciding who goes, it doesn't work. You can implement a public vote to save people before the eviction vote (like I suggested: three noms by the HoH, public saves one, housemates vote from the remaining two), that'd add an extra interesting element to make the game harder, but if you're going to do HoH, PoV and have strategy talks all week to try and target people only to have the public decide who goes, it renders the whole thing a waste really.

As for the bit in bold, I actually think we should adopt slop right away and I think it's one part of the US format people in the UK wouldn't mind so much. You can still have shopping tasks, but split them into groups so that one half is on luxury and the other is on slop. Basic rations are boring and the producers are always seeking drama so a divide in who has food will almost definitely provide it week on week.

I was one of the people who slated the US format having never watched it before several years ago so I definitely know what you're talking about, but when I ended up giving BBCan's (which in mine and a lot of people's opinion is now the best produced Big Brother internationally) first season a go two years I fell in love with it straight away and then spent the whole summer watching almost all of the old US seasons, and now I'm a superfan.

The show is very different, very differently edited and takes a lot of getting used to at first and you have to watch it from an entirely different perspective as its own entity, it's own show and completely separate from BBUK. But it's good and it works. If you're going to try and BBUS season though make sure you do one of the earlier ones (or even try BBCan tbh, it worked for me! and it's more of a hybrid of BBUK/BBUS) cause the show isn't as good as it used to be these days.

One of the biggest pluses though is that both the US and Canada still have live feed!

I like having the choice if I want to vote, I wouldn't want to see it scrapped.