Why did BB8 flop?
 

BB8 (undeservedly imo) was a massive flop at the time and had a massive reduction in ratings from BB7, despite a great launch cast, good launch ratings and hilarious first week.

Why you think it flopped? Was it the CBB5 race row, the all female twist, overexposure or something else?

I cannot speak for BB8 as a series but I do believe Cbb5 had a big role to play BBUK's fall in success.

The Race row had just simply proven to become a tadd too controversial and that clearly put lots of people off.

With BB8 Although i have not seen it all but tbh I think 5,6,7 the golden era and the beggining of the freak show proved a huge success. But i think as time went on People were begginning to get tired of the repetive nature of putting in more colourful fame hungry housemates and over time the tasks too were not recieved well either and i think in the end people were only looking for the original social experiment with normal people and BB8 probably felt like an entirely different show compared to the very first.

Thats not to say BB8 is bad in anyway!

For me it was down to the cast. Now I liked BB8 and thought the cast had various entertaining housemates. But within the 2007 realm, none of the female launch cast were exactly likable people at the time (I did root for Charley, Nicky and Tracey but they would divide the average viewer). Samanda I suppose were the one exception but they weren't really big presences till much later on. Even when you take into account the ENTIRE cast, the only ones who were semi-prominent and likeable were Samanda and Brian, and the obvious final 2 to have. But it simply had too much conflict for the average viewer to be immersed in unlike BB7 which had a lot more balanced of a cast.

Even BB6, as beloved as it is now, had so much controversy because it was lacking in clear-cut likability and being very evidently full of heated conflict. But that series was a) shorter in length and b) its polarizing housemates were still more likely to drum up rootability than BB8's equivalents; Makosi, Derek, Kemal and Science were all extremely popular at some point or another.

This is also worsened by the fact BB8 followed from BB7 which as I mentioned, had everything BB8 was complained about for. I'm sure the race row may have also put a few off as well.

1. Race row
2. All female launch twist
3. Ziggy and Chanelle's toxic relationship
4. Producer manipulation and constant claims of fix
5. Long ass length that dragged post Charley
6. Awful twists
7. Too many dull housemates

Charley Uchea.

Something changed for reality TV post-2006

The race row was the main issue, coupled with the fact that it's hard to top BB7 in terms of cast and production. The halfway house rubbish still makes little sense to this day.

It flopped when Lesley left as the winner early on

tea

reality tv was changing, the public get bored and move onto the next big thing

True it was a natural decline, with the race row as a catalyst

Wasn't that around the time where BGT just started as well

Yup. 2006 was an elite summer in general. The switch from the likes of Makosi and Tyra Banks’ rant to SCD and BGT gaining prominence was always going to hit old-skool reality TV hard.

It’s as much of a gradual change in culture as it is Big Brother just going to sh*t.

The casting.

The launch rating showed people were there to watch. Even the first week did comfortably good. People just didn’t take to the cast as they did with BB7.

People always say it’s the race row but the first week of BB8 averaged 4.7m which was higher than BB1,2 And 6.

If you look at the ratings it only drops massively due to the launch of BGT. That week BB clashed with BGT everyday Therefore the ratings were extremely low and then BGT ended and ratings rose slightly to around 3.9m but not back to the 4m levels.

The audience was clearly there seeing as 6.6m watched Launch, 6.0m watched Charley’s fake eviction and 5.3m watched Charley’s actual eviction.

bye @ 6 million people watching Charleys eviction :joker: X factor could only wish for those ratings

structured reality tv started to become more popular I guess

charley being the last peak of big brother <3

Are X Factor’s ratings really that low now?

theres no accounting for taste dear

Because of the race row, the all female launch and the poor cast. BB8 has a hanful of fans here because of some good housemates, but at the time and until recently it was seen as BB4 level bad (something I personally don't agree with, I found it a good deal better than 9).

I think another thing that is rarely mentioned and something I probably won't explain well, is that a lot of the time it felt stagnant. With BB7/6/5 for example if you missed a week you would miss a whole load of dynamic changes, storyline and the house could be a completely different place to the week before. BB8 felt as if it had no story movement so if you missed a week, who cares? All you would have missed is another Charley row and another Chiggy break up/make up, so people probably just got bored of it and gave up.

Yes. I’m sure they’re lucky to get 5 million nowadays.