Predictably, Channel 10 and Southern Star have turned a potentially
interesting social experiment into a circus of ever spiraling
entertainment value. This year they thought they'd hold their audience
with more and more gimmicks - to the point it's too complicated for
anyone to bother with. Simple maths says that multiplying the airtime
and opportunities for SMS and phone voting will increase revenue, but it
fails to predict the 'switch-off' point. For me, it was a how-to-vote ad
every 6 minutes that did it, but I can't say I could have hung on much
longer through that tedious late-night snorefest.

By identifying the core of their market - tabloid-reading, TV-addicted,
contest-entering, Austereo-listening twentyteens - and zooming in tight
on their wallets, they've eliminated all their ratings sidebands
entirely. Just to make sure, how about saturation primetime popup ads to
bottom-out everybody's tolerance? Or try to engineer more nudity and
sex? Only Channel 10 can wind up the titilation knob so shamelessly.

But the fundamental reason BB is not good entertainment, is the housemate
selection process. Middle-demographic, gormless clones motivated by the
thrill of surfing on their own egos are never going to make interesting
viewing. BB won't be pulled mid-season but I predict the late-night
'live coverage' won't last much longer, as it reveals just how feckless
this group of people really is. They simply have nothing to say, and
nothing to do but pretend to be interested in what everyone else doesn't
have to say, and no amount of surprise twists is eever going to change
that.

Imagine the possibilities if they threw in some thinking people. Give me
a fascist, a Marxist, an intellectual, a punk (a proper one), an artist,
an idiot savant, a slut, a toff, a racist, and some real ethnic diversity
- then maybe some genuine group dynamics might develop, or at least
conversation which extends beyond reading aloud from books and incessant
dicksizing. Even the Poseidon Adventure ensemble was more interesting
and diverse than these guys.

This year has been by far the most expensive to produce, and I predict,
by far the lowest rating. As soon as it wraps up fingers will be
pointed, sponsors will walk and heads will roll, they'll say the audience
is fed up with reality TV and that will be that. Another dozen or so
lab mice will trickle out of the media and into the shrink's clinics and
Gretel Killeen, hopefully, will find something to do which is out of
range of microphones and cameras. And nobody will ever admit that if
they'd just taken 12 truly interesting people and put them in a box, it
could have been fascinating.

Ripped from aus.tv