Jane Roscoe
This chapter details a production study of Big Brother Australia. In doing so, it provides a case study of an innovative multi‐platform media event. It is an example of a format that delivers its content across television, the Internet, telephony, print media and radio, in addition to the live events on site at the theme park, Dreamworld, where the Big Brother house is situated. It also provides an opportunity to examine the indigenisation of an international ‘reality TV’ format. It also draws on interviews with many of the key creative personnel, textual analyses, as well as on an audience survey conducted on the Big Brother 2 website. Key issues concerning the development of the format, interactivity and media convergence are analysed and explored. It is also an attempt to move beyond the very tired and simplistic readings of ‘reality TV’ that seek to position it as evidence of television’s ‘dumbing down’ or as an example of the democratisation of media. Both positions fail to consider the more interesting questions of how these programmes have changed contemporary broadcasting practices, the complexity of the productions and the innovative relationships constructed between the producers, texts and audiences. This chapter thus takes as its starting point the notion that these programmes are not cheap and dumb, but rather they are complex productions that speak to a media‐savvy audience who are sophisticated in their understanding and use of the various platforms. It provides an alternative analysis that seeks to move beyond such simplistic readings of the form.
Somewhere along the way television changed.
Reality‐based programming, often referred to as ‘reality TV’ now dominates schedules across the world. A brief look at the TV guide in any number of international locations will probably reveal a week packed with DIY shows, cookery programmes, docu‐soap formats such as Popstars, and most recently ‘reality game shows’ such as Survivor and Big Brother. Certainly in Australia, these shows not only fill the schedules, but also top the highest ratings lists. These are shows that have been able to attract large audiences, thus appearing to satisfy viewers, networks and their advertisers. While initially they were globally cheap to make in comparison with home‐produced dramas and documentary (for example, Funniest Home Videos, or various emergency style shows) today’s programmes are far more sophisticated and expensive to produce. In Australia Network Ten paid $AUS 28 million to secure the second series of Big Brother and the first Celebrity Big Brother, and is rumoured to have paid about the same for series which aired in April 2003.
James Friedman has argued that ‘the proliferation of reality‐based programming in the year 2000 does not represent a fundamental shift in televisual programming.’ However, I would suggest that in fact there has been a very significant shift in the contemporary television landscape, and that popular factual entertainment is both a symptom and response to those shifts.
There has been a marked swing towards ‘light entertainment’ in factual programming, and a greater circulation of new television formats. Together this has changed the look of prime‐time television. In place of the long‐running dramas and current affairs shows are docu‐soaps and reality game shows. There is nothing new about formats; soap operas and game shows have been circulating internationally for some time. What is new is the configuration; these formats seem to be at the nexus of the local and the global. That is, they seem to be both reflective of local cultures and adhere to a desire for local content, yet do so within a framework that is clearly designed to be universal and easily sold around the globe much like any other franchise.
There has been considerable debate as to the reasons and consequences of this shift to light entertainment and this reliance on formats. Some critics have argued that popular factual entertainment programmes like Popstars and Big Brother have directly contributed to the decline in drama production in Australia. Others have argued that such programmes have undermined the documentary project. Both positions see the new television formats as the reason for less local production across factual and fictional programming. What both positions fail to acknowledge is that these new formats are both a consequence of, and a response to, the wider changes in production and policy that have resulted in less drama and documentary.
The contemporary broadcasting landscape has been changed by technological developments, changes in regulation practices and specific changes in production processes. Audiences are more fragmented, sophisticated, knowing, and as a consequence, more demanding. Our relationship to (and with) television has changed; media convergence means that content is now often delivered across a number of different platforms resulting in new relationships between texts and audiences. We might engage with this content simultaneously across different platforms, for example watching the television show while also accessing the website and sending an SMS (short message service delivered via cell or mobile phones) to the show. While this may not yet be the experience of the majority of viewers, recent studies have shown that it is the experience of certain groups of viewers, in particular young people.
Reality formats have changed the broadcasting landscape, but why are they so popular in so many different countries, across so many cultures? Like McDonald’s, what they seem to do so well is translate the global product to the local context. Examining the process of ‘indigenisation’ provides some insight into why a programme like Big Brother seems to have done so well.
One of the significant things about Big Brother is the way in which it has been translated from an international format into a local phenomenon. Formats are traded around the globe, with the expectation (or assumption) that the local buyer has merely to add the local talent into a pre‐determined structure. To a certain extent this is true. Each format comes with a ‘Bible’ that details every aspect of a show, from the opening graphics, to the number of scenes per episode, to the choice of host. Big Brother is no exception. Originally developed by Dutch company Endemol, the Bible lays down details such as how Big Brother should speak to housemates, provides challenges and tasks, and designs for the house. The Bible lays out a blueprint for an international brand. However, it is a misconception that the brand cannot be developed or changed. The Australian Big Brother provides a good example of this in that there are a number of ways in which the format has been ‘indigenised’ and made ‘Aussie’.
One of the most obvious ways in which the format is made local is through the design of the actual house. In Australia the Big Brother house is set in the grounds of the Dreamworld theme park on Queensland’s Gold Coast. When series one went to air in 2001, the house looked very different from the images Australian audiences had been offered of the UK and US houses. It was surrounded by bush in a theme park on one of Australia’s busiest and most commercial holiday hotspots. A tourist mecca, the Gold Coast embodies the Australian lifestyle – surf, sand and sunshine. The house itself was designed to capture these very qualities and to reflect a sense of ‘Australianness’. Tim Clucas (Network Ten executive, and network commissioner of Big Brother) remarked, ‘we wanted this to be a real Aussie house, that means relaxed lifestyle, sunshine, backyard pool, backyard BBQ, a real Aussie Big Brother.’
The house was a far cry from the overseas versions, which looked to Australian audiences like prison compounds. In the second series the comfort was stepped up again, the furnishings supplied by Freedom Furniture (an aspirational furniture store), a spa had been added, and the whole house redecorated. Hanging around the pool and having a ‘barbie’ (barbeque) are all signifiers of the relaxed Australian lifestyle, something the show attempted to tap into and represent. It was important then that the house represented the ‘local’, yet it was also comfortable for other reasons, the house had to be a ‘non‐issue’. It was suggested by the producers that once you take the house out of the equation, the participants focus on themselves (rather than their surroundings) and the audience are also then able to focus on the participants and their relationships. It seemed to work and perhaps it is not surprising that around the globe Big Brother houses were spruced up for the second and third series.
It is not only the house that represented a certain version of Australian national identity, the housemates also embodied certain characteristics associated with a certain version of national identity. While the producers claim not to be casting particular characters, they acknowledge their desire to reflect Australia in their choices:
In terms of the casting it was about trying to find, to some extent, Australian types. People who represented the types of people you would meet in the community, and it was useful to think about that without having a shopping list of any specific types.
There was much discussion about the choice of housemates and whether they were representative of Australia. The housemates in the first series seemed to embody the ideals of health, fitness and certain ‘outdoorsiness’, a central trope of Australianness. The winner, Ben, could be described as the archetypal Aussie male. He is a rugby fan, likes his beer, has a dry sense of humour, calls everyone ‘mate’ and inhabits what can be called ‘good bloke country’. In the second series, Peter (the winner), looked remarkably similar to Ben, and exhibited many of the same ‘blokey’ characteristics. Marty, the runner‐up in series two, was also an archetypal character, a young naïve country boy who embodied ‘rural Australia’, a land full of drovers (someone who drives cattle, sheep, and so on, to markets, usually over long distances) and farmboys.
In the second series there was an attempt to update the representation of Australia that had been offered in series one. There had been some criticism that the participants in series one had not been a diverse enough group, and not really representative of ‘Australia’. However, it should be noted that the producers never made any such claims to represent the nation. This was a discourse drawn on by critics and audiences. Certainly in series two there was, on the surface at least, a greater range of identities on offer, from the ‘rural young male’ (Marty), to the bisexual city girl (Sahra) to the older sporty woman (Shannon) to the mixed heritage social worker (Turkan). All of the participants seemed to be more sophisticated, media savvy, more ‘aware’ and certainly more ‘knowing’ about the actual format and so much more aware of being ‘on show’ at all times. In spite of these surface changes, the same discourses seemed to structure the experience of being in the house.
A key discourse is that of ‘mateship’. Mateship is central to notions of national identity in Australia. Significantly, it is a discourse that is associated with a certain version of Australian masculinity. It was noted by many people who worked on the show how ‘mateship’ seemed to be at the centre of the Big Brother experience. For example, Dave English, who worked as day‐producer on the first series, noted how the housemates reacted to losing tasks. They did not seem to care whether they won or lost; it was more about being in it together: ‘It’s a cultural thing … They don’t seem to give a bugger whether they win or lose.’
In the public discussions of the show, mateship often featured as a key indicator of what the show was about, and its Australianness. The house activities often focused on activities that might bond the participants together (for example, painting the living room) as well as being a site in which individual housemates were able to exhibit the qualities of mateship (for example, supporting someone through an emotional crisis). […]
The style of the Australian Big Brother was also to a certain extent indigenised, with producers responding to the context in which the show was shown. In Australia, the daily show was broadcast at 7pm each night, with a G‐rated audience (suitable for all viewers) in mind. It also followed the very successful long‐running soap opera, Neighbours. It ran on Channel Ten, a commercial broadcaster who has most recently reinvented itself as the ‘youth channel’ with their target audience being 16 to 39 years old.
Peter Abbott talks about the broader social and cultural factors that impacted on how the show was made, and the relationship between himself and the housemates:
In terms of how we ultimately made the show, I think it [cultural differences] had most effect upon our structural style and our editing style because classic Big Brother has four scenes a show … my sense was – or the sense of a lot of us was – that we should be making something that more closely followed an Australian soap opera model which involved more scenes.
I think the audience is ready for it because they have a literacy in the grammar of soap operas, which means you can come into the scene two‐thirds of the way as long as you know what the plot line is. The classic format is not for this time‐slot.
The (mostly) non‐authoritative relationship between Big Brother (Peter Abbott) and the housemates also owes something to cultural differences:
It’s a very Australian thing. Only in Australia would the housemates, when I come over the loud speaker saying, ‘This is Big Brother’, say ‘Hello Pete’. I said ‘stop it’ but it’s that Australian attitude to authority that goes back to our culture … there is no culture of authoritarianism in Australia and there is no culture of inherited respect.
The relationship also changed between the first and second series. The housemates had seen the first series and, like the audience, knew how the game was played. Generally more media savvy, the second set of housemates already had a different relationship with Big Brother. This was not just the case in Australia, but in other versions around the globe, as Abbott notes:
I think from my discussions with other Big Brothers, inevitably one has to become tougher because the housemates become more knowing. They play a tougher game with you and you have to become much tougher with them within limits … in the second season where everyone understands a bit better what’s going on you can start tightening the screws without getting rebellion. […]
One of the most significant things about Big Brother is the way in which it has been able to mobilise and engage audiences across a number of delivery platforms. Big Brother has created an active fan base as well as an audience for the show. The show has rated well with Channel Ten’s target audience; in the first and second series they have managed to secure (and retain) over 50 per cent of the 19–39‐year‐olds. However, it is not just that people are watching but they are participating in a number of ways across the various media platforms.
There are three important ways in which Big Brother has allowed for participation on behalf of the audience: through the siting of the House at Dreamworld theme park, through Big Brother Online, and through telephone voting. These activities and sites are central to the creation of a fan base. Here I am drawing on the work of those who see fans as active in their appropriation of texts, critical in their understandings of them and, importantly, also see the fan as a producer rather than a consumer of texts.
The location of the house, production facilities and the studio set at Dreamworld allows for a number of different spin‐off events and experiences. It brings together entertainment and education – the location set with the theme park – and is certainly unique in terms of the worldwide Big Brother productions. For the fan of the show there are opportunities to go behind the scenes and find out more about how the show is put together. Visitors to the Big Brother exhibit are able to view the control room, although they cannot visit the actual house while the series is running. At the end of the series, the house is open to visitors; here they can visit the mock‐up Diary Room and have their photograph taken, and share a confession or two. For the fan visitor it is a chance to engage in what Nick Couldry calls a ‘shared fiction’, that is, the shared experience of being there. He suggests that this experience is not always about memories or nostalgia, but is an ‘anticipated act of commemoration’, an experience to be remembered in the future when watching the show.
Being on site can enhance the viewing experience and enjoyment of the show because it allows access to the processes of production that are so often hidden. Seeing the banks of TV screens in the control room gives a sense of how much material there is, and how little makes the 7pm show. It erodes the usual distinction between the viewer and the producer by allowing the visitor access to knowledges that are specialised and usually reserved for those working in the industry.
In every Big Brother there is always a crowd to greet the week’s evictees, but, in Australia, the crowd is managed and regulated in quite a specific way. One of the reasons locating the house at Dreamworld was so attractive was the possibility of using the large auditorium to turn the eviction show into a live event. The eviction show has evolved into a forum in which a whole range of fan activities can be performed. The live audience are there to be seen, both by the evictee on arrival in the auditorium, but also by the audience at home. […]
The website is a central component of the event that is Big Brother and it provides the audience with a range of activities that allow it to construct different relationships with the text and other viewers.
We never intended to be just a support site for the TV show. It’s actually about something extra … More depth is what we like to think. Also, it’s a direct interface to viewers and users. […]
The relationship with audience members is potentially extended through the multi‐platform experience in a number of ways. Updating the diary section every half‐hour was a particularly successful strategy which gave ‘fans’ of Big Brother access to the most up‐to‐date information/inside gossip (which is the fans’ ‘currency’) and provided a reason to check the website at regular intervals during the day. It also allows a relationship to be built with audience members that is of a different quality. This is where the development of the format is also of keen interest to advertisers. Through a multi‐platform delivery, advertisers and broadcasters now have the opportunity to talk to a member of the audience for an extended time each week rather than for the 26 minutes of a specific television show. As noted earlier, the development of new advertising strategies that integrate brands and services across the platforms is a key way in which Big Brother has been a leader with continuous innovation over the two series.
The experience of Big Brother shows that websites can do more than merely replicate what is represented on a particular television programme. They provide a site for audiences to interact (with the show and each other) and can be used to build loyalty to the product/brand. Far from turning people away from television, the survey results suggest that the website actually drives audiences to the show and to the other platforms. It clearly ‘adds value’. It is worth noting that recent studies (in the UK and NZ) looking at young people’s use of media show that many have both TV and computers in their bedrooms, and that they use both media concurrently. Young people will watch TV shows while at the same time have the associated website open (and are probably sending out multiple SMS). Such patterns of usage are not unusual, and are likely to become more commonplace. […]
Examining the production of Big Brother in Australia has provided rich data to explore the changing nature of contemporary popular factual entertainment, particularly the development of reality ‘event television’. In particular, greater media convergence, both in terms of technological developments and audience uptake, has meant that there are greater possibilities for the delivery of content. This has been capitalised on by the producers of Big Brother who have made good use of the online environment and telephony to allow audiences greater opportunities for interaction, and qualitative advantages for advertisers and brands.
While Big Brother is an international format, a brand in itself, it is not an unchanging product. Rather as this case study shows, it has been indigenised and developed for and by the specific cultural and social context of Australia. Here we see the intersection of the local and the global and the negotiation of this terrain. There are indications that the relationship between producers and participants, producers and audiences, and between audiences and texts is constantly changing, which is why the format seems to be able to continue to intrigue audiences and scholars alike. For those who work on the show it also provides an opportunity to make a different type of television. Event television is not the norm, and so provides training and opportunities to both experienced practitioners and emerging producers in Australia.
While many critics (across the world) have been quick to dismiss the format, taking Big Brother seriously, as a cultural product and an experiment in multi‐platform delivery, allows a different view of the show. Far from being cheap and dumb, it is in fact expensive, complicated and geared to a sophisticated viewer. As digitalisation provides greater access to more channels, as format trade increases and media convergence becomes the mainstream, it will be formats such as Big Brother that lead the way. Reality TV is not going away, but it will never be the same.