[Hooly One]

WHETHER you think Big Brother is trailblazing, titillating or just plain tired, there is no denying its popularity. Like a particularly virulent heat rash, it crops up every summer, spreading over every exposed part of Channel 4’s schedules - peak-time, specials, off-peak spin-offs - along with hours of real-time coverage on the digital E4 channel. If that’s not enough, you can even watch it on the net.

But despite the almost weekly predictions that the reality television market is on its last legs, and repeated doom-mongering over Big Brother’s format, the audience for BB5 is up from last year. An average of five million viewers are tuning in, an increase of 400,000, with higher numbers on eviction days.

Voting is also up. The latest figures show that 8.4 million people have sent in their votes so far, already surpassing last year’s total of 7.6 million, although it has some way to go to reach 2001’s figures in the final week of 14.2 million.

The results are no surprise to the programme-makers. After the lacklustre performances of contestants in series four - dubbed "Big Bore" and won by a teetotal, thirtysomething virgin from Orkney - the creative team at Endemol chose a different tack. Conflict, they decided, is what creates drama, and drama is exactly what people want to see.

Evil Big Brother was born, and just to be sure, they fed into the mix a bunch of the most sexually confident and scantily clad contestants so far. In order to maximise the chance of a sexual pairing on screen, they also picked out those who claimed they weren’t too fussy about which sex they coupled with.

Happily, this has all worked out well for Endemol - where staff, it was revealed this week, earned an extra £8 million last year - and for Channel 4. The only remaining question is: who watches it?

Certainly not the moral majority, as, following this year’s first-ever British reality TV sex and the explosive fight where police had to be called in, both Family Youth Concern and watchdog Mediawatch have branded it irresponsible.

The acres of coverage in the red-top tabloids and celebrity magazines - and subsequent dropping off of interest in the broadsheets - may hint that the ABC1 audience has lost its appetite for the fifth series.

Yet Sara Booth, a press officer for Big Brother, says that this year has actually seen a 5 per cent rise in the number of ABC1 viewers from last year. The highest increase, however, is from the sought-after 16-34 age group. Out of an average of five million viewers, 2.2 million of them - almost half - are within this group. This represents an increase of 10 per cent on last year.

Reinforcing this view is the fact that the latest series has been a big hit on the net, according to research company Hitwise. Last year, the interest in the reality show dropped by half after the first week, but reports indicate that this year’s appeal for net users is increasing. Hitwise’s figures show that www.channel4.com/bigbrother is more than holding its own and, at the beginning of June, was 54 per cent bigger than the previous year.

"IT’S NO SURPRISE that it is attracting younger viewers," says Dr Cynthia McVey, a psychologist at Glasgow Caledonian University and an expert on reality television. "All of the contestants, apart from Ahmed, are relatively young.

"They are different from the original line-up, in that they are more media-savvy, more Big Brother-savvy. They are more likely to know what they want out of it and see themselves as going places, which young people find attractive."

There is also an aspirational element to the programme, adds McVey. Endless exposure in celebrity magazines such as Heat and Closer, where the antics of former and present contestants sit alongside pieces about Hollywood actress Catherine Zeta-Jones or the latest Coronation Street star, makes the show an instant talker. "It is seen as fashionable to the younger viewer," she says.

There was no option for the programme-makers to alter the format of the show - it had become boring - but viewing figures aren’t everything. The notorious fight scene - which was speedily taken off air before police were called in - led to a debate over the programme’s ethics and at least one psychologist quitting the show.

David Wilson, a Professor of Criminology at the University of Central England in Birmingham, was hired to advise on conditions in the house but left after producers failed to heed his advice. "These are very prison-like conditions and producers asked me to come along and observe how their personalities would change," says Wilson, who designed the secure unit for violent prisoners in Britain’s most notorious prison, Woodhill. "The housemates are extreme types and conflict-orientated.

"The problem is there’s no place to hide from each other. Even the toilet door is see-through. I told producers that it was dangerous."

The claustrophobic effect is worsened by lowered ceilings, raised floors and not enough beds. "I told producers they were deliberately creating situations where there will be disruption and violence," adds Wilson. "If I was trying to bring conflict into a programme I would do everything they had done on Big Brother Five." The now-infamous brawl between contestants, which happened after two housemates, Emma and Michelle, were allowed back into the house after hearing themselves bad-mouthed by the others, led to some soul-searching among professionals. An investigation was announced into the affair by media watchdog Ofcom after complaints from viewers. Much debate was had over whether there should be a set of guidelines on how reality TV shows operate and what boundaries they should remain within.

Both McVey and Wilson stress that an experiment along the lines of Big Brother Five would never have been allowed in the field of psychology.

"I would never be able to do this as an academic piece of research," says Wilson. "An ethics committee would have said, ‘You are putting people at risk.’"

However, the fact that the programme is essentially a game show is never far from the surface. The contestants realise that they are being stage-managed - a fact that made the fight episode, where the show’s "alpha males", Victor and Jason, were dressed respectively as a clown and Widow Twanky - more than a little surreal.

But McVey stresses that the show is based on informed consent. "As far as I know, Big Brother runs workshops to warn people of the dangers - and of course the show has been repeated enough for contestants to be aware."

From Nasty Nick’s media career, Sada’s attack on the producers for allegedly manipulating her image, Jade Dyer’s regret at having sex on teen Big Brother, Jade Goody’s meteoric rise from being pilloried by the tabloids for her weight and looks, to being the darling of the celebrity magazines - the present housemates would have to have been living on another planet not to realise that they, too, may not be in control of their image. They are aware of the fact that once out of the house, everything is up for grabs.

WHILE AN OLDER audience may be turned off by the endless nudity, the pressure-cooker conditions and the tantalising prospect of live sex on air, younger viewers, it seems, can’t get enough. All good news for Channel 4 - which sees the 16- 34-year-old age-group as its prime target.

Wilson says: "The way I have explained what is going on in Big Brother this year is to think of Endemol as being the casting director of a play that the public have already seen several times. The key thing is to keep the public’s interest up, to have more interesting characters and conflict between them."

This season’s mix of a Portuguese transsexual, a lesbian and a handful of are-they/are-they-not bisexuals seemed to work. The only question now is: what will they do next year?

Scotsman News

[Red Moon]

I don't know about the older audiance bit..... a lot of people at work in their 40's and 50's watch the show.... after all by the age of 40 your past worring about "endless nudity, the pressure-cooker conditions and the tantalising prospect of live sex on air"

You have seen it all anyway.... and hopefully done it all... and plan to do a lot more.