Big Brother Is Our Eastenders - Channel 4 Boss

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Big Brother is our EastEnders, says Channel 4 programming head
Leigh Holmwood
guardian.co.uk,
August 22 2008

Big Brother has entered a new phase in which it is now Channel 4's equivalent of soaps such as EastEnders and Coronation Street rather than simply event TV, the broadcaster's head of programming Julian Bellamy said today. Bellamy added that the long-running reality TV show had moved on from the "pioneering" days of its first two series and had bedded down into an annual "post-watershed soap".

"I do think it has settled into a different phase on the channel. When you think of Big Brother from series one and two, it was at its most pioneering," he said, speaking at Channel 4's autumn programming launch in Edinburgh today. There was a frenzy around the first couple of series, but you can't keep replicating that. It is now settling into a different period. It is our post-watershed soap and that is fantastic. We have got to move on from contrasting it with Big Brother one and two."

Bellamy said he did not expect the show to again reach the huge ratings peaks it did at the beginning. Big Brother's ratings peaked in the third series in 2002, when the final, won by Kate Lawler, attracted 9.4 million viewers and a whopping 49% audience share.

"In all likelihood it feels like it has settled into a rhythm. Are we likely to get 10 million viewers again? That is going to be a tough call," he added. Bellamy defended the current series of Big Brother, saying it was a "really good series, genuinely".

The current Big Brother contract with production company Endemol has two more years to go and Bellamy said no decision had been made on whether the channel would carry on after that. "Big Brother is still an incredibly important show for us. It still gets twice the audience of the slot average," he added. "It has two more years on its current contract and it all depends on what happens after that. As long as it continues to be as robust as it is we will have it on the channel."

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I've made this as a seperate thread because I've noticed the soap-opera feel of this year's Big Brother as well. In the past the show was more of an unknown quantity, but all the contestants these days know exactly what is going on, adding a different edge to things.

I've genuinely enjoyed this year's show and could recommend it to anyone as a great televisual diversion. It's definitely been more entertaining than any other TV over the wet summer...