It seems Big Brother’s production team have made the show’s final transition from social experiment to scripted soap opera. Live feeds from the house have been killed off completely and fans are furious.
Like this article to dislike the cancellation of live feeds.
As of Wednesday morning, three days after housemates first entered the compound, the live update Twitter feed @BBAULIVE has yet to post any update from the house.
Instead, it’s stuck on its last message from 2013, promising to make a return for the current season:
22:20 AEST: Big Brother will get back to you… In 2014. Live Feed Transmission ended.
— #BBAU LIVE (@BBAULIVE) November 6, 2013
And in an extra insult to fans, the official BBAU Twitter account, Executive Producer Alex Mavroidakis (who is usually a prolific tweeter) and Channel 9’s social media manager refuse to answer any questions from fans about the status of the feeds.
Hey Mr self proclaimed "BB purist" @AlexMavroidakis. Where are our live feed updates? #bbau
— Behind Big Brother (@behindbb) September 8, 2014
The closest anyone has got to an actual answer is Mike Goldman washing his hands of the question:
@Sav001 @BBAU9 @AlmedaMich not sure guys :)
— Mike Goldman (@mikegoldmanlive) September 10, 2014
It appears Big Brother production has no ‘live’ team whatsoever. The official BB website contains no updates from the house and so far news stories have only been posted after the show aired on Channel Nine, so they contain no new information.
This in stark contrast to last week when Alex Mavroidakis told us he and his co-producer were “Big Brother purists“.
Slowly stripping away Big Brother’s live element…
The live feeds have been slowly downgraded over the course of the show’s run on Channel Nine. Petrified of another turkey slap incident, 24/7 video feeds were scrubbed when the show was rebooted in 2012.
Then in last year’s season the Twitter feeds were regularly frozen when key events took place. The largest of these was Nathan’s decision to quit the show. Scared of losing ratings, Alex Mavroidakis froze the Twitter feed. However before the show went to air visitors at Dreamworld spotted Nathan smoking outside the Big Brother compound.
It now appears the one element that distinguished Big Brother from other reality TV shows is gone for good. The reactions on our forums have been scathing:
Sorry but that’s killing most of the excitement a lot of us had for the show, everyone discussing current events, wondering if it will be shown, hearing of the arguments/major moments and the excitement of discussing it while waiting till tomorrow to see it. This is now just an average reality show. They deserve to lose viewers with the decision to not give us one of the most basic elements of the show. This is shameful really…
Big Brother was about us, the audience, being akin to the entity “Big Brother”, able to look in and see what is going on 24×7. Now, it is no longer this at all, and by removing the last vestige of live coverage (such as it was), has all but killed the format for me. I had high hopes with the pre-season announcements of a more interactive website on jump-in this year, but that has been horribly dashed.
Not cool. Thought they said there would be even more viewer interaction this year.
Not going to be more if there’s nothing to discuss between tv shows which don’t even show half the housemates..
We’d spend all day debating every update ffs.. so much more happened than what is in the shows, and we wanted MORE not less…
I won’t drop one dime on votes if they are only going to give us heavily-biased, edited, watered-down, whitewashed footage which leads the audience down a predetermined path of choosing their producer hand-picked favourite.
What do you think? Join us in the forums.
Channel 10 use to cater for young technological audience. Channel 9 however wants to attract housewives who think “stream” is somewhere their kids swim and anything slightly controversial occurring uncensored would get their Neofeminist panties in a twist and they’d be launching a massive social media campaign within minutes (they need something to keep them busy between 9am-3pm I guess). I mean the show airs after The Block, what can we expect.
It’s pretty clear when Sonia and producers have been talking about the show that they call the contestants “characters” not “housemates” now. The show is pretty much nines version of neighbours, which is ashame the characters I’ve seen so far are actually interesting, but the shows producers insist on labelling them before we even get a chance as viewers to make our own minds up.
It has been doooooooooooown hill since Channel 10 had it. Where are the classics? Regie’s? Sarah Marie’s? Fitzy’s? (excuse speeling lol) Now we get former housemates ROOM MATES!
I am not sure yet if this decision will harm viewer numbers in the long run, or help it. Perhaps people will tune in rather than use the website? Or maybe Jump-in will give Big Brother the boost it needed? I have no idea, but I am hopeful!
I think so far this year, it’s been more about the ‘Glitz and Glam’ rather than the actual personalities of the housemates. This is why i loved the 2012 season so much, the house was simplistic and the show was centered around the housemates intelligence and interesting personalities, rather than gimmicks (For example, Skye being the endearing dumb blonde). So gimmicky. They need to tone it down and choose people based on their unique intelligence and character, rather than stereotypes.
Yup, no surprises there. Best thing we can do is no one at all vote
its utter crap, you would think in this day and age we should be able to have live feeds, its like Jersey Shore now or even worse The Shire
Just don’t vote! Refuse to give channel 9 what they want ti they give us what we want! we want Friday night games (or similar) live feeds and more mature content! I will not vote when my understanding of whats going on is edited heavily by producers! This season sucks so far :(
Those live feeds were my only way of catching up with what was happening somedays.
Stopped the live feeds maybe because everyone is friends with an ex housemate, well they lost me this year, i spent a small fortune last year on saving my fav housemate, due to watching on daily shows and reading/watching on live feeds..i can tell you now i will not vote for someone because bb wants us to by not showing the true housemates evenly..i am a huge bb fan but if this is the case of no live feeds, im gone :-(
fuckin typical, all reality shows have turned to crap and so many ppl believe in them .. need to stop these useless money spinning shows now!, do not vote ppl, ur vote does not count, the producers decide in the end who goes and ur vote just creates $$$
Hi there,
I would LOVE it if the live feeds came back plus the live updates elements etc – it’s just not the same without them and feels like the show has this huge hole in the middle where something that worked and worked very well used to be. Please bring it all back guys..
Old news. Live feeds have been fucked for years now
ch9 is doing a terrible job with BB, FCK YOU for not giving us live feeds and taking away video live feed!!!
In a social media world where everyone relys on Facebook twitter Instagram ect ruling their live this show has gone the total opposite way…they could make big bucks to get people to watch live feeds or have heaps more fans if live feeds were avalible but nothing…so this is my goodbye…goodbye big brother
I think the root of the problem is that Nine is trying to make an adult show a family one. While Nine are trying to avoid controversy, they’re actually creating controversy for themselves in the way they are heavily controlling the show this year.
Streaming doesn’t cost the earth. With the amount of money made from sponsorship they can afford to upgrade their web account from Dodo at least.
Even if they charged $10 a month like the US do and got 100 people to sign up, that’s still $3000 extra bucks they would be making. But Nine are too scared of any spontaneity happening or any actual live events.
It is really hard to get into this season. At the moment we have nothing else, and hopefully this doesn’t continue. Not seeing updates, being like, ‘oh i want to see that.’ I might as well just record the show and burn it through on the weekend. Doesn’t seem like an even I must watch every night anymore.
It’s coming.
so live feeds are coming? Got something to back that up. Great if true though!
Considering there are no live feeds, what is the point of actually watching the show when it airs? Just download it for free after the show finishes and then you don’t have to put up with ads every 5 minutes. If it came down to Channel 9 getting the green light for another season but had to cut budget for live feeds then fair enough I would rather another season. But if you are going to pay people to edit the footage, the show should go for much longer, like last night there were 5 hours of the footy show after Big Brother.. I mean really?
Yeah I agree
10 times 100 is 1000$
Big Brother goes for about 3 months, $1000 x 3 is $3000.
What is the point of this show now? The live feeds made it real. surely if they were worried about the content they could run it on a delay and not show anything they deem inappropriate. I don’t understand…
Welcome to Big Brother Australia shifting from a social experiment as it was originally envisioned, to a highly scripted, so called reality show. It’s happened to BBUS and BBUK.
The whole concept of “big brother” was that you never know when someone is watching you. the live feeds on the net and the live tv channels in the uk were a great idea so you can log on and watch any time you wanted . I still watch but not enjoying the drama that is played out like a low budget soap opera
Channel 10 use to charge to watch live feeds 24/7, i think it was around $40 for 3 months cant remember. It was so good then because you could see it all and get a feel who you wanted to vote for. I have been watching from the beginning but since coming to channel nine its gone downhill, its all fake and you can tell its rigged. I use to vote alot but this year I am not going to bother, as you dont have enough info on the house mates to form a good judgement.