[Brekkie]

As I've gone to the effort of writing a blog, and as is it's out of season you're probably not keeping an eye on the fansites, I'm posting part of my latest BB Spy blog here, and would like your views on the topic too, whether here or in the comments over there...

The financial woes of ITV, C4 and Five have been well documented - although there are those that believe C4 are actually much more financially secure than they’re letting on. After a year of pleading poverty and concentrating on selling their PSB credentials, C4 have finally admitted that they need to exploit their “commercially successful” programming in order to help fund any PSB ambitions.

However, the corporation still appears to be letting its biggest cash cow (Big Brother, in case you were wondering!) fade into obscurity, with all indications pointing to it ending next year, and little ambition from C4 to prevent the show meeting it’s date with destiny. Indeed C4 now think so little of it in the press pack for the Spring and Summer mention of Big Brother was limited to just a footnote in the Factual Entertainment section.

Now, nobody is denying that the show is in trouble - out of the main UK reality shows Big Brother was the only one last year to loose viewers, while Celebrity Big Brother was seen as creatively bankrupt by many long term fans. However, most fans believe the show at least deserves a shot of coming back from the dead - and really C4 have nothing to lose. If a revamp works, it could give another few years of life to the format. If it doesn’t, well, they were going to axe it anyway.

With the latest ratings of 2.5-3m Big Brother’s future isn’t as financially secure as it once was, but if the effort was put in to boost the audience figures back to around the 3.5m level, financially at least it could become attractive to C4 once again, especially if the cost of production could also be trimmed back.

Full blog available here

I'm going to be looking at how Big Brother can cut costs in my next blog, so any thoughts here are welcome, especially regarding the spin-offs, the importance of Davina and the other hosts and any areas where you think money can be saved.