[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...hmm, I can't really comment on that because I wasn't familiar with anything about Granny Waissell, that all came a bit of a revelation...but it is completely different to 'fix' in that there's no vote rigging or anything, just BB knowing their audience and how they're going to 'pitch' each series in terms of their HL shows/what they'll reveal and what they won't reveal etc...it's not 'reality' and it's not balanced but very much the engineering of 'characters'...(I very rarely have a favourite win btw so 'acceptance' really doesn't come that hard...)....

I don't think it's ever been any different though, I remember the earlier seasons when live-feed was often available and, if you watched live feed, the tone was often totally different to the HL shows... You'd see people talking and joking who the HL shows never showed together, extra things said in conversations that we're omitted to change the implications, etc. The only difference was that live feed was more readily available (was often on E4 half the day) BUT it makes little difference in terms of audience manipulation... Because it was only ever a very small percentage of hardcore fans who actually WATCHED live feed. Most of the voters were basing their opinions on the HL shows - and so the evictions and the winner were still decided in that edited version of the show.

In my opinion the only real difference now is not that there's more manipulation... We're all just reality TV veterans now so we see it easily, whereas in the early years we were all just young sprouts.