Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

largelyinaccurate t1_je42mre wrote

I wonder how this corresponds to tv viewership. Has it also declined? Do you know the reason the live feed was killed? I bet the show runner would be interested in this data or should be at least. Does anyone from the show openly engage on the BigBrother sub?

2

AntoniaFauci t1_je5wvs2 wrote

Nobody knows the true reason. Lots of clearly false ones were floated by the show operator.

The most plausible is that it’s a combination of misguided groupthink and a desire to create something catering to brand sponsors.

There’s a few important pieces of background. One is that there’s a very co-mutual element of social media promotion to Big Brother Canada production. One can’t exist without the other. Social media influence has saved and boosted the show on several key occasions.

Also, BB Canada relies heavily on corporate sponsors who fund the commercials and in return get heavy in-show product promotion and exposure. Really heavily.

In some ways, it’s inspired work to see brands being so heavily included. Every episode is jam packed with sponsor branding, including competitions and regular events. Players eat at a mini Wendy’s drivethrough. Regular meals come from a meal kit subscription business and the house refrigerator is a sponsored billboard. The rooms are sponsor themed and decorated.

So anyway, the likeliest scenario is production promised sponsors increased social media presence in the form of these so-called “digital dailies”. That much was obvious as many of them were just players doing practical informercials for products and services. Like meal kit subscriptions or home cleaning appliances.

But it appears that to hedge this bet on “digital daily” infomercial-laden content, they were scared to have that compete against the traditional video feeds, which couldn’t be curated and contrived for sponsors.

So, having decided to kill feeds, they need a cover story. They chose to first blame fan toxicity, and to try and fraudulently claim some kind of mental health high road.

That was debunked pretty quickly, so the next excuse was cost.

But people saw through that. The feeds are a free byproduct of the show’s production of filming everything. Video streaming is pervasive in 2023. All the same costs are already sunk, so feeds doesn’t add any cost, and that lie was kind of obvious.

The next was to claim feeds can’t be monetized. Yes, people actually tried claiming this. In a world where ad-based video streaming is incredibly pervasive and commoditized. Where there’s scores of platforms that could have been instant turnkey revenue.

So they switched to pretending the daily releases were going to be better, unfiltered but more distilled.

But once revealed, they were clearly not. They were late, limited, and infrequent. Excuses were floated about the semantics of what “dailies” are, or should be.

The subreddit moderator going to war on the fans who questioned this hasn’t helped.

And now, this week, production has suspended the “dailies” without explanation. And yes, of course, subreddit moderator is still telling people not to critique it. This is the mod’s current statement:

“Complaints about the lack of live feeds will be removed” along with this fake justification: “as to not clog up the thread.”

Or this gem: “frustrating as this news is, please don’t […] post to vent frustrations about the lack of live feeds.”

2