Please Note: This is a 100% opinion piece. Take what you want from it, agree or disagree. I’m sure there will be some loyalists who will discredit anything said below – but it’s OPINION based. Post a comment if you agree or disagree.
There have been MANY a conspiracy theory amongst internet fan boys and girls over the diary room leak this week. That leak saw a producer talk to Dan Gheesling in the Diary Room while it was broadcast over the loud speaker into the house.
This took live feedsters and die hard fans into a tail spin and alleging (again) that producers were manipulating houseguests to help further their OWN game and trying to fix the outcome of the show we’ve all come to love and adore.
I’ll be the first to admit it that the game has really lost it’s sparkle over the past few years. Producers insist on bringing back former houseguests (they were once newbies too, you guys) and adhere to a RIGID Big Brother format that the die hard fans are getting sick of. But believe it or not the amount of DIE HARD Big Brother fans VS. casual viewers is a pretty wide margin. Although I’m sure they do love the die hards, they’re not producing the show for you.
Now onto the real reason for this article: producer manipulation.
It’s been SEVERAL years that those crazy fans have gone ON and ON about how producers manipulate the game to benefit the production of the show. I for one believe this is bullshiat. I’m no lawyer and have done little research on the topic but from what I understand Big Brother most likely has to adhere to the same or similar rules that game shows do. Therefore if they were caught cheating or fixing the show in anyway there would be MANY lawsuits and hefty fines from the FCC. And let’s be honest. The show has around 5 million viewers per episode. Do you really think they would think it would be necessary (or worth risking fines) so that Janelle could win? Please. It’s ludicrous.
I will say that producers DO manipulate (for lack of a better term) Diary Room entries and show edits. But that’s 100% to be expected. They coax houseguests into getting what they need to complete a story – personally I’ve had first hand knowledge on how this is done on EVERY reality show. I’m sure what Big Brother does is tame compared to other reality shows.
At the end of the day it’s a TV SHOW. There has to be some sort of thread of something going through a show to make it fun and interesting. 95% of the viewers of the BROADCAST show do NOT watch the live feeds. Therefore, to be able to explain the back-end of every story ever shown on the show would take much longer then 3×40 minute shows per week. Feedsters watch 24/7 and pick up on everything and then bash the show when not every single minute of footage is aired. Big Brother is unique because of the internet feeds, and if every show had nit picky fans watching 24/7 they would find flaws in EVERY reality show.
Yes, it’d probably be nice if they didn’t manipulate the edit a bit – but that IS reality tv. At the end of the article is a clip from Charlie Brooker‘s Screenwipe where he talks about Reality TV editing – it’s a brilliant representation of what Reality TV editing is like. Big Brother is just one of thousands of show across the world that subscribe to this. Don’t like it? Don’t watch Reality TV. Done.
