Heres the shortened version postandpollmand!
The reason BB8 failed was Brian Belo.
A black winner was always going to be gold dust in PR terms, and a huge achievement on Rebecca de Young's CV.
BB6 was supposed to be Makosi’s year.
Science failed because he was too ghetto/rapper to appeal to middle England. Makosi failed because she was bonkers. Vanessa failed because she was attached to an intravenous sedative drip. Derek was evicted because more people disliked him than disliked Eugene.
The lesson had to be learnt – to get a black winner you had to have someone to appeal to middle England.
In amongst the thousands who queued, was there one young black male, with a heart of gold, youthful innocence?
Gerry had a perplexed look with Brian on the live feed. “Everyone else was in hiding for two weeks, but you were hiding for four?”. It didn’t add up to Gerry. What was it about Brian that had seen him in hiding for twice the length of time of the others?
The paramount aim was a black winner. There was the assumption, wrongly, that ratings would take care of themselves.
Brian was the reason why so many electorally unfriendly housemates were chosen.
Every housemate was picked with Brian in mind. The Carole’s, Tracey’s, Laura’s, Nicky’s, Billi’s, none of them were ever going to have mass appeal.
If Brian had been caucasian, and the twins afro-caribbean, would it have been such a close battle in the final week? You might think that, I could not possibly comment.
The BB production team forgot to give the public what they want, and a lot of what the public want is extremely good-looking people. If BB’s 1 to 7 had never happened, the importance of a black winner to complement the set would never have been anything like as weighty. Instead of being petrified of putting in a group of watchable, good-looking 20somethings, who might actually prove to be popular (and give you a repeat of BB3’s Kate v Jonny v Alex v Jade in the BB8 final), only Liam and Ziggy made it through, and both received lacerating edits.
In the tea leaves, BB isn’t dead, its slumbering. The production was often slick this year, but its totally wasted giving a silk purse of high production levels to the sow’s ear of housemates. We just didn’t care how Tracey or Carole reacted.
The key to BB9 getting back the 5.5 million viewers, which I think it can (and will) do, is to decide to forget every single previous series of BB. Pack it full of potential winners, people we care about.
The ingredients are still all there, and I think BB9 will be a massive success, because I think they will realise that nurturing Brian was the reason why BB8 failed. Handpicking the winner cost millions of viewers, because other attractive housemates were deliberately edited out of the line-up to focus the show on to Brian. If they drop the editorial bias, and pick loads of attractive 24 to 26 year old hm’s, the public will watch. It’s the key, it always has been the key.
Good luck.