[Captain.Remy]

Originally Posted by Patrick

BB9 and BB10 werent bad, better than BBUSA.
Havent seen the other versions simply because I dont speak French,Spanish or Itallian.

Have you watched BB USA, like a full season ? BB8 and BB11 were by far the best ones yet and pretty much owned the UK versions at the time. BB11 USA and BB10 UK were both amazing, completely different so I can't comment on these 2.
Some people might say it's the length that destroyed the format but look at BB USA. 11 series ? They haven't changed the format since BB3 and yet CBS pulls of awesome ratings. Same thing for Survivor: 20 series and nothing has changed since.
So what is it about BB UK that didn't work out well ? It is one of the few versions in the world that went badly, ratings wise from one series to another to another to another....

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Captain.Remy

Have you watched BB USA, like a full season ? BB8 and BB11 were by far the best ones yet and pretty much owned the UK versions at the time. BB11 USA and BB10 UK were both amazing, completely different so I can't comment on these 2.
Some people might say it's the length that destroyed the format but look at BB USA. 11 series ? They haven't changed the format since BB3 and yet CBS pulls of awesome ratings. Same thing for Survivor: 20 series and nothing has changed since.
So what is it about BB UK that didn't work out well ? It is one of the few versions in the world that went badly, ratings wise from one series to another to another to another....

BB doesn't rate brilliantly in America, plus its very low key and with zero press interest. A good comparison for the UK would probably be the Joseph type shows on BBC1 or Dancing on Ice. BB was a front runner in the UK reality TV market until it randomly imploded one year and never recovered.

[Captain.Remy]

Originally Posted by Tom

BB doesn't rate brilliantly in America, plus its very low key and with zero press interest. A good comparison for the UK would probably be the Joseph type shows on BBC1 or Dancing on Ice

Not brilliantly but rather well with less press interest. Their key of success is to put the right mix of people at the good time and manage to make it work. BB USA has dominated BB UK, in my opinion, for the last 2 years. That's why it will go on and on and on...

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Captain.Remy

Not brilliantly but rather well with less press interest. Their key of success is to put the right mix of people at the good time and manage to make it work. BB USA has dominated BB UK, in my opinion, for the last 2 years. That's why it will go on and on and on...

But the American audience have much lower expectations than ours, and it isn't seen as trashy, gutter TV or chav TV over there. Over here there is a stigma attached to watching the show, something you'll never truly understand unless you live here. BBUK got out of hand during BB7 when they kept trying to give the public more and more, until they reached the level where they can't shock us anymore. Plus it got over exposed and by the next celeb series, noone was watching it (the ratings were down before the race row). The race row couldn't have come at a worse time for BB, so noone cared for BB8 because of all the negativity around it and it had to be censored so it looked even weaker. BB7 left them with no option but to recycle twists which made it even worse. BBCH was full of false promises and never materialised, BB9 was an odd blip and promising return to form but CBB6 was awful, ratings fell through the floor then even worse for BB10 which just had a very dodgy launch. Thats why BBUK is in the state its in, whilst BBUSA is still going strong. BBUSA haven't made themselves creatively bankrupt and haven't had their show dogged by a controversy for 3 years that pretty much castrated the show.

If they wanted to keep BB what they should have done was pushed BB8 back a year with a full scale relaunch, and leaving Celebrity Big Brother in the history books. Hijack could've become its replacement on Channel 4 with a few tweaks.

[iRyan]

Originally Posted by Tom

BB doesn't rate brilliantly in America, plus its very low key and with zero press interest. A good comparison for the UK would probably be the Joseph type shows on BBC1 or Dancing on Ice. BB was a front runner in the UK reality TV market until it randomly imploded one year and never recovered.

BBUS had it's highest ratings in years (I believe at LEAST 5 years) in 2009, and is still one of the top reality competition shows on TV. It gets press attention, just not to the same extent as other shows because the only reality shows that get alot of press attention here are the ones with celebrities in it (minus American Idol). America is celebrity obsessed, unfortunely.

The past two seasons were the best seasons ever, its definitely is not going anywhere since each year the ratings climb 500,000-1 million more.

Alot of people slag it off saying it looks fake, but it's just because of the way the editing is set up. It's basically set up so those with a short attention span can stay interested without getting 'bored'. However, if you aren't ADD like alot of America, you can watch the live feeds. And trust me, the show is MUCH better when you watch it with the feeds. Because there is so many interesting things they don't have time to show.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by Captain.Remy

Have you watched BB USA, like a full season ? BB8 and BB11 were by far the best ones yet and pretty much owned the UK versions at the time. BB11 USA and BB10 UK were both amazing, completely different so I can't comment on these 2.
Some people might say it's the length that destroyed the format but look at BB USA. 11 series ? They haven't changed the format since BB3 and yet CBS pulls of awesome ratings. Same thing for Survivor: 20 series and nothing has changed since.
So what is it about BB UK that didn't work out well ? It is one of the few versions in the world that went badly, ratings wise from one series to another to another to another....

I think there is a simple reason why Big Brother is failing in the UK. It's in the UK. Over here the show was a tabloid event and is the bane of the PC, Daily Mail reading populace. When the racism row occured, the show faced riddiculous censorship and was left in a creative slump that destroyed the summer series in 2007, which in turn destroyed any chance of the 2008 series ever having a fair chance.

Then instead of changing things in a big way and fast like they should have done in the post racism row, they toned it down and tried to stick it out and, well, here we are today, with about a third or it's original audience.

Books will be written about this someday. The racism row and Big Brother 8 are what killed Big Brother in this country. Big Brother 8 for it's part was a three month lesson in how to destroy a TV franchise. It was a textbook exmaple of how not to pull off a TV show.