Celebrity Big Bother
The briefest of posts in the final minutes before the next series of Celebrity Big Brother to make a prediction. Not a particularly bold prediction, but a forecast nevertheless.
After disappearing from our screens for a year, Celebrity Big Brother is back on Channel 4 for the first time since the infamous Jade Goody/Shilpa Shetty row over racist comments made in the Big Brother house two years ago. C4’s sister channel E4 attempted to keep the celebrity version of the show alive last year with an alternative format, Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack, but it was panned and went largely unwatched.
My prediction is that four things need to work in C4’s favour if this series of Celebrity Big Brother is to be a success. Firstly, as with all so-called reality series, it will depend on the casting and what the contestants do and say while they’re in the house. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it will depend whether opinion-formers and particularly the tabloid newspapers get behind the series. That in itself depends on what happens in the wider world this January. If another star couple begin acrimonious divorce proceedings, the front pages may not be available to the Big Brother householders. Finally, Celebrity Big Brother will have to compete with whatever else is on TV this month. Dancing on Ice on ITV shouldn’t pose too much of a threat, although that too will get its share of tabloid attention.
For my part, I won’t be drawn into the Big Brother maelstrom unless it’s particularly fierce and has wider implications for TV programming generally. C4 clearly don’t want a repeat of the Goody/Shetty fiasco but their worst nightmare is that the series flops altogether.
