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Big Brother, don’t bother

Posted in Media, Marketing, Digital, Branwell Johnson, Latest reporters' blogs December 17th, 2007 by Branwell Johnson

In the immortal words of Vic Reeves “You wouldn’t let it lie!” Channel 4 are bringing back another Big Brother spin off in January that has all the makings of a programme as fascinating as watching paint dry.

Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, kicks off on E4, the broadcaster’s “yoof” digital channel on January 3. It sees a host of different celebrities take the role of Big Brother to a hand-picked group of “exceptional 18-21-year old non celebrities.”

Hmm. Talk about setting yourself up. First off, will the viewers be able to tell the difference between the celebrities and “non-celebrities”? What kind of celeb worth their salt will be on a C4 digital only channel? What’s the betting the celebs will include at least one former BB entrant?

Then who picked these “exceptional” young people? Was it public audition? Can we play guess the IQ versus exhibitionistic tendency ratio? What about the bikini quota?

Despite the Celebrity Big brother crisis earlier this year that turned Shilpa Shetty into a household name, and despite C4 big cheese Kevin Lygo saying the celebrity variant of the show would be “rested”, the broadcaster just can’t stop trying to squeeze its golden goose so hard it will turn to paté in its hands.

The latest figures revealed last week show the broadcaster has seen its all day audience share dip 11 per cent. In August Channel 4 vowed to try to return to a more challenging and less ratings-driven remit but that drop must be hard to accept. I expect more U-turns to follow.

Virgin Mobile has signed up to sponsor Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack so it must be hoping that the show still has some lustre. It’ll be interesting to see if the tabloids, will follow their usual symbiotic relationship to Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity et al. They need the show to help fill pages and the brand needs the coverage for the oxygen of publicity. But will they papers get on board a digital channel-only show that’s unlikely to pull an audience of 750,000?

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