[zakman440]

Let me break it down this way - lack of Live Feed is making the civilian show fail, and the civilian show is failing because of lack of Live Feed:

Lack of Live Feed is making the civilian show fail

The lack of a Live Feed is making the civilian show fail because we're spoon-fed a 45 minute highlights show. We can't form a true opinion on what happens in the house because we don't see everything that happens in the house - only what the producers want to see. You can't get fully invested in the show because it's being angled towards the casual viewer rather than the long-term viewer, hence why Celebrity Big Brother is still a success - you already have an idea of who the housemates are because their personalities are well known, plus it's a much shorter run.

In civilian Big Brother, we're expected to get to know a bunch of (mostly) unknown people whom we've (mostly) never heard of before for 3 months. Live Feed helps with that because we get to watch them 24/7 - we get to see everything. With the 45 minute highlights show, it's edited to favour one bunch of housemates and the others just get left behind, which isn't really fair. The Live Feed helps to supplement the edit and keep the show honest - and if a housemate really has been boring, they can't blame the edit because the evidence will be stacked against them.

The civilian show is failing because of lack of Live Feed

It's no coincidence that the highest rating series of civilian Big Brother on Channel 5 was the one that had the most Live Feed - Big Brother 14. It's also no coincidence that the countries who are still offering a Live Feed (the USA (both Big Brother USA and Gran Hermano US), Canada, Albania, Turkey etc) are still on the air and are thriving/showing no signs of slowing down. Meanwhile - Australia, the one country that went down the no Live Feed route taken by Channel 5, has been axed due to low ratings.

The Live Feed helps create a buzz around the show which ultimately leads to higher ratings. It's not a nice example, but take the Hazel and Daley incident from BB14. That unfolded on the Live Feed, which lead to more people talking about it on social media and the press running with the story as a result. Daley's ejection episode the next day was the most watched episode of civilian Big Brother on Channel 5 to date - and it was largely because of what unfolded the night before on the Live Feed.

Without that buzz and without being able to make that proper connection to the housemates, Channel 5 will continue to make terrible series like Big Brother 15 and Big Brother 16 with endless twists, producer manipulation and no sense of consistency, in order to give the show a minor ratings boost at times. The lack of a Live Feed is ultimately why the civilian version of the show is failing - they're sacrificing any success of the show for editorial control and countless twists.

(And let's face it, if they're advertising this series to be all change and they've spent all that money on a house extension, they might as well go all out as it's clearly not a matter of cost).