Reality Television

And

Big Brother

Reality Television

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors.

The genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television (primarily with game shows), but has expanded significantly since the Big Brother first aired in 1999.

Big Brother information

Big Brother is a reality television series broadcast in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Channel 4 and E4, and on S4C in Wales. Internationally, it is broadcast on the Polish network TVN. It is part of the Big Brother franchise first developed in The Netherlands, and is currently the second longest running series in the franchise. Channel 4 has confirmed that it will not broadcast Big Brother after 2010.

… Launched in the Netherlands in 1999, ‘Big Brother’ (BB) is now an annual

feature (bi- and tri- annual in some cases), in the television listings of the twenty-seven European countries. Contestants are members of the public who are confined in a house for a number of weeks, whilst viewers vote the ‘housemates’ off. The show’s unchanging core concept means that the necessity to maintain interest has led to gimmicks and controversies of increasing shock-value, which vary in emphasis across BB’s different national versions.

Producers of Big Brother UK, due to screen its ninth edition next year, have tried to provoke stormy sexual politics amongst the housemates. They provide insufficient beds and unfailingly over-represent sexual deviants in their choice of contestants – including a ‘psychic witch’ in 2005 and a Portuguese transsexual who won the show the year before. Meanwhile the Czech Republic’s ‘TV Nova’ had gorillas as contestants.

More Brits (14.2 million votes, 2002) dialled a premium-rate phone number to voice their opinion in a ‘Big Brother’ series than voted for the governing Labour Party at the 2005 general election (9.5 million labour voters).

Why is Big Brother so successful?

The timing of Big Brother could hardly be more apt. The 1990’s saw a preponderance of personalised narratives on the television as UK audiences became obsessed with watching the daily lives of their countrymen on television in a dizzying array of docu-soaps.

Housemates are locked in the Big Brother house and cannot escape society and the public opinion – there is no privacy. CBS has found a way of trivialising it into a prime time TV show.

Big Brother uses the same presenter for the live evictions. The narrator is also well-known and is successful for the audience –

Marcus Bentley Channel 4 has made available live pictures and audio from the Big

Brother house. However, approximately a 15 minute delay is in place so that audio and/or pictures can be censored to comply with TV regulations. Therefore audiences can see (almost) what they are doing at any given moment in the day.

… The action from within the House used to be streamed

live over the Internet for a one-off fee subscription that lasted to the end of the series, and for free to broadband customers of sponsors Virgin Media.

Live tasks Big Brother is a hybrid that uses social issues to its

advantage whilst filming, this pulls the audience in as they can relate to certain situations.

It also gives the public an insight into how other people handle things when under pressure.

Spin-off celebrity big brother also gives the audience an insight into how celebs act with unknown people and form opinions.

…www.facebook.com/pages/...Big-

Brother-9/13794325148

Endemol UK ENDEMOL UK is the largest independent production

companies in Britain and annually produces over 5,000 hours of output.

ENDEMOL UK is a market leader in digital media and also incorporates, ENDEMOL GAMING and DIGITAL STUDIOS - which specialise in digital content.

ENDEMOL UK is part of Endemol - a global leader in entertainment that comprises an international network of companies that spans over 20 countries on five continents.

In the UK Endemol has also recently acquired leading producers Tiger Aspect, Darlow Smithson and Tigress, whose combined portfolio spans  drama, comedy, animation, children's programming, entertainment, factual, features and feature films.

What is Convergence and New technologies?

Convergence – is an attempt by institutions to gain profit by making a range of media companies work together.

Convergence of Big Brother The reality television show, Big Brother has been responsible for

integrating many media and communication channels in order to produce one interactive show.

Media channels such as, print, radio, television, computing, Internet and telecommunications have converged to generate the success that shows like Big Brother are used to. Whilst televisions enabled audiences the view the show in half hour or hour blocks, in conjunction with the Internet, people were able to access live image and audio footage of the housemates at any time.

Telecommunications have enabled audiences to interact with online voting polls as well as voting from mobile and landline phones.

In the fourth series of Big Brother, Hutchison Telecoms introduced 3G and video streaming. This technology allows 3 consumers to connect with the Big Brother house 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and choose their own camera angles to watch their favourite housemates.

Big Brother and new technologies

There have been many issues surrounding Big Brother and the use of new technologies. Due to lack of technology, Big Brother is now ceasing to meet audience’s needs. They are therefore discontinuing the Big Brother television series as of January 2010.

Sponsorship of Big Brother has changed throughout the series due to many different issues. Could this be the reason why new technology cannot be used, due to money problems for the company?

…

… Media regulator Ofcom has ruled that a number of high-profile sponsorship deals for

shows including Big Brother and The X Factor are in breach of its broadcasting code for emulating commercial advertising breaks.

Ofcom, which conducted an investigation into more than 60 TV sponsorship deals, found that nine broke the broadcasting code governing sponsorship credits.

According to Ofcom's broadcasting code, sponsorship must be "clearly separated from advertising" and must not "contain advertising messages or calls to action".

"In particular, credits must not encourage the purchase or rental of the products or services of the sponsor or a third party," states the relevant section of the code.

Channel 4's Big Brother, which at the time of the Ofcom investigation had a deal with Virgin Media, and NatWest bank's sponsorship of the 4Homes programming strand, were also found to have breached the code.

The regulator had similar issues with two idents run by Virgin Media around Big Brother. One featured a voiceover stating that two girls in the ident "use their Virgin mobiles to get perks at V Festival without having to flash a roadie like usual". The second used the line "Len's fibre optic cable is just like his women, fast and easy. Big Brother sponsored by futuristic fibre optic broadband from Virgin Media".

Ofcom judged that the reference to being able to get "perks at the V festival" was a special promotional reference to the benefits of being a Virgin Mobile customer. It also said that the promotional language used in the second ident - such as "fast and easy" - went beyond brief descriptions of the sponsor's business and amounted to advertising messages.

GlobalisationWhat is it?Globalisation describes an ongoing process by which

regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning

network of communication and execution.

How?The first Big Brother was distributed and produced in

the UK, however through globalisation, other countries such as India, Africa, American and China now have their own versions of the popular docu-soap.

Representation Since mass convergence of Big Brother Endemol has

fundamentally grown in size. Big Brother has become more controversial to gain bigger

audiences, however this controversy never comes back on Big Brother but endemol.

Controversy pulls people in to watch docu-soaps as people withold the natural instinct to rebel and by watching something so controversial they feel as if they are rebelling.

However, through mass convergence Endemol has to be more creative in order to keep it’s audience.

Big brother (endemol)needs to be creative

The media representation of the show helps audiences acknowledge and know Endemol.

Big Brother ident