[Matt]

This was the first time that Viacom's CEO has spoken publicly since the Channel 5 deal went through - and in fact the first time he's spoken publicly about Big Brother - and rather than sing its praises, he was very eager to point out that C5 isn't dependent on it, even though it's their biggest show, and it could be used as a valuable tool to cross-promote Viacom's pay TV offerings (evidenced by the fact that Charlotte Crosby won her series). You never hear ITV speak about The X Factor in such a way even though it's down in the ratings.

Obviously it's been pointed out that his comments could be a ploy to reduce the cost of BB during negotiations, but taking them at face value this is bad news. Lets not forget C5's interest in BB was lukewarm at best until Richard Desmond bought it - he was the person that really wanted BB on C5 and now there are new overheads it's possible they'd prefer to get rid of it sooner rather than later.

The only positive is that Dauman said they'd leave it to the programming team to decide BB's future - Ben Frow seems a lot more enthusiastic about it.