| Loukas |
26-05-2017 12:41 PM |
Big Brother is watching … but is anyone watching Big Brother?
Quote:
The latest series of the reality-TV show has to contend not only with diminishing numbers of viewers, but also rumours of a reduced run. Soon it will literally be 15 minutes of fame.
It’s not screamingly apparent when contestants divide their time with such diligence between the two other compulsory Bs of BB – brawling and bonking – but this year there is something rather quaint about Big Brother. In the 00s it became synonymous with easy and quick fame, but fame changed. In an era when a melodramatic salt-sprinkler can hit 7.2 million Instagram followers off the back of a 35-second video, Big Brother seems neither easy nor even particularly quick – winners struggle to make a name for themselves, and you still need to give up most of your summer to follow them.
Earlier this year, Celebrity Big Brother kicked off to its lowest-ever viewing figures and shedded a fifth of its audience on night one. Viewing figures for BB are now so small and the show’s contestants so lacking in visibility that popular culture is experiencing its first real-life exploration of the mind experiment I like to call Schrödinger’s Twats.
Naturally, Channel 5 doesn’t have any better ideas, so the show trundles on with a return to screens due on 5 June, but the good news is that while it won’t propel its winner to semi-fame as quickly as an Instagram video of some Saxa being chucked about, the road to victory could be slightly shorter this year, with reports suggesting the show will be reduced to a 40-day run. This, Digital Spy notes, is down on 2016’s run of 50 episodes, which was down on 66 in 2015 and 72 in 2014.
At this rate, by 2020 Big Brother will be one week-long. The following year, it will be rebranded as Little Brother and take place over the course of 24 hours, its companion show actually having more screentime and therefore being revamped as Little Brother’s Big Brother. In 2025, it will be on air for a Warholian 15 minutes, providing contestants with the task of punching someone, saying something racist and masturbating, all in less than a quarter of an hour.
Finally, in 2029, the famous sliding doors, through which so many hopefuls have passed down the years, will be replaced by a motorised revolving door that ejects entrants at such velocity that they are launched high into Elstree’s night sky, their precise trajectory defined by factors such as tightness of trouser and voluminousness of hair. Some will land in a seat directly opposite presenter Emma Willis, others in a nearby field. The most aerodynamic will finally come to rest in front of a contract to endorse, on social media, a new range of protein powder for £350 per tweet. The ultimate prize, for the final Big Brother winner.
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The Guardian |
