Too Many Tweets...

Why Twitter's tween audience and their voting patterns leaves me fearing the worst...

Being a Reality Television fan as well as a regular attendee of television and media related forums I will almost inevitably find myself faced with a discussion topic which has become much more frequent in recent years, that topic in question being the power and influence of the 'tween vote' and the supposed mass onslaught that would subsequently come from fans using social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Whilst I have seen the 'tween vote' being utilised in reality television I find however that the power and influence largely depends on one key influence in particular, albeit one which makes me worry not only for the motives and workings of the younger television viewer but also for the future attitudes and ethics of Britain as a nation. 

Whilst a tween vote is to be expected for mass media programmes such as Reality Television what I have found from watching these shows is that the tween vote is only to be taken fully into account when the voting is in a negative guise, whilst in a positive guise the influence of the youth is rather lackluster and also calls into question issues of lethargy within the tween audience. The first two series of Big Brother saw Channel 5 introduce positive voting, encouraging it's audience to save housemates as opposed to the normal tradition of voting negatively to evict them. Whilst the later series of the show during the Channel 4 era had seen this tween vote out in force during these two Channel 5 series the influence of the vote swung away from the tweens and towards an older, more mature and arguably more avid show fan base. This was demonstrated with the voting trends during the show as the first two Channel 5 series, as Aaron Allard-Morgan, two contestants who appealed to the older voting demographic, proved victorious in their respective series, this being in spite of the tween vote's dislike of both and preference to more tween friendly contestants such as Jay McKray and the Insiders alliance in BB12 and BB13 respectively. Similarly another example of this was seen in last season's series of The X Factor in which contestant Christopher Maloney saw himself as a regular victim of abuse from twitter followers online, and yet for the first seven weeks dominated the phone voting to save by a large margin, whilst tween-friendly contestants such as Union J found themselves regularly within the bottom two, depsite being most ideally placed to pick up the twitter vote.

The evidence above obviously points to the tween vote proving more influential in a negative voting environment compared to a positive one, but this in turn also leaves me concerned with the way that television is perceived from a younger generation of viewers. Why is it that users of social media feel so comfortable demonstrating their passion for a television show in a negative manner and yet are so lethargic when it comes to expressing it in a positive manner. Yes Twitter is a media form designed around impulse but from my own explorations of the medium it seems largely devoid of positive input from it’s young users, even when Channel 5 were implementing the vote to save voting method the calls from this tween audience would be to get the designated villain of the week out despite the voting method making this an almost impossible task. The judgement of a younger generation when it comes to television has thanks to twitter and increasingly negative, cynical and at times verminous experience.

In the process this makes me question where Britain will stand in regards to our judgements within society in the future, thanks to Twitter is Britain now destined to be a nation devoid of demonstrating positive views on something? A nation where we judge based solely on negative traits and where ‘the best’ of something is in fact the least worst? These twitter tweens who judge solely on negativity could one day be the doctors and lawyers of our future, and if they judge based by the same aggressive and negatively orientated means that they do on Twitter Ido have worries for the work ethic and agenda of Britain in the future.

Top 10: Most Underrated Big Brother Housemates

Nearly over 200 housemates have graced the walls of Britain's most famous house, and whilst most of the mainstream can easily remember BB stars such as Jade Goody, Nasty Nick Bateman and Nikki Grahame to name but a few, a large number of fantastic contestants have found themselves criminally overlooked, partly down to being overshadowed by other housemates or for the stigma that came associated with the series that they appeared in. This list is designed to highlight to the reader the ten contestants whom I feel a most overlooked and underated in the Big Brother community, I want to stress this is a personal list which some may not agree with, but I will try and talk you around to my line of thinking. With that being sad let us begin:

10) Faye Palmer (Big Brother 12)

Now most of you right now will be thinking how can Faye be considered underrated when she was arguably the second most popular contestant of Big Brother 12? Well I have reason to feel this way and it largely stems from the reasons why Faye's fan base was established in the first place. Whilst Faye's popularity in Big Brother 12 cannot be denied I am often left feeling that the primary reason for Faye's support stemmed largely from the fact that she was considered an extention of Aaron as opposed to her own merits, which I feel is a real crime as in my opinion Faye was the contestant in Big Brother which demonstrated the most depth and grew the most as a character during the course of the series. We have to remember that by week one of the show Faye was a largely overlooked and forgotten character within the show, and yet by the time she departed in week 8 had established herself as the most important female of the series, whilst I do admit that her relationship with Aaron gave her the pedestal to garner this growth Faye carried this on and generated this complexity through her own merits. This was also helped by bringing Jem in during week 4, whilst I dislike Jem as a character and disagree with the decision to cast her the relationship between the two sisters was compelling to watch, especially as Jem's paranoia over Aaron took over and left Faye torn between the intentions of her sister and her showmance partner, which continued to build her depth as well as a report from the audience. An argument could be that Faye was made to look good due to being in a weak series but that doesn't change what a great contestant she was, and somebody who deserves more praise on a BB12 rewatch.

9) Sylvia Barrie (Big Brother 9)

I want to stress that I in no way like Sylvia as a person, and the likelihood is that she would be somebody who I would look to avoid if I met her on the outside world, but in the BBUK community I like to judge people based on the character that they are portrayed as on screen, and in my eyes Sylvia played her role as the bitchy villain superbly, but due to being surrounded by more prominent villains is often overlooked. The early stages of Big Brother 9 saw a conveyor belt of villains come and go through the house with an alarming regularity, of these Alexandra De Gale and Jennifer Clark would gain much notoriety, with Alexandra being ejected for her threats and Jen for helping to cause the defining moment of the series in 'spit-gate'. Sylvia however is dismissed and forgotten by most casuals, her only real status being that of Alexandra's lackey during her reign of terror, but in my eyes Sylvia was just as evil and just as prominent a villain as Alexandra was, she stirred trouble with much regularity and helped to cause some early drama such as her argument with Mikey over him putting on her underwear and her overreactions to pretty much every situation was as compelling as it was infuriating. She picked up Alexandra's baton and carried it on well, and whilst I do feel that the public made the right choice in getting her out in week 3 before she began to get tedious I felt that she was a great early season villain who deserves more recognition.

8) Anton Murphy (Big Brother 12)

There are two primary schools of thought when it comes to Big Brother fans over Anton Murphy, the first was that he was a farcically weak villain in what was one of the poorest seasons of Big Brother in the UK, whilst the other is that he was an irritating try hard who failed in his attempt to try and become the next Victor Ebuwa, these two accusations I can't deny, but I feel that these flaws make people forget some of the more positive aspects of Anton, mainly in how unintentionally funny he was. I've always loved unintentional humour, especially when it comes from Reality TV shows, and in my eyes Anton delivered this in spades, every boastful comment and positive statement that he made about himself, be it  his prowess with women or how great of a strategist he was was nearly always immediately followed by something which contradicted that and left him looking foolish as a result, arguably making Anton Big Brother's own version of the Bad Luck Brian Meme, added to this was the mini-feud with Aaron in which Anton played the accident prone, Wille E. Coyote style villain to perfection, nearly always being left with smoke on his face (figuratively speaking) as every attempt to show up Aaron was countered or backfired on him. Anton doesn't deserve the venom of other BB villains, he was light-hearted enough and whilst the Victor wannabe act was cringe-worthy it wasn't worth getting too wound up about.

7) Emilia Arata (Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack)

 In all honesty I could have put any of the Celebrity Hijack contestants on this list, as the E4 exclusive series was incredibly overlooked and arguably the closest thing we will get to an old school Big Brother series in this day and age, but I went with Emilia as underrated arguably for the same reasons why I consider Faye underrated, namely in the amount of depth and storyline generation that came from her. Firstly there was the relationship between herself and her circus performing boyfriend Victor, as in my eyes Victor would come across as overprotective over his sister which in turn led to an interesting depth and engagement to Emilia's character. As well as this Emilia was also involved in a relationship with Jeremy, which I consider one of the most engaging and enjoyable relationships in the show's history, it may have been not as passionate or intentionally romantic as some other relationships but it was complex, sweet and very engaging to watch, and Emilia was a large part of the reason for that. The celebrity hijack contestants were all overlooked characters, but Emilia stood out the most for me by far, I would have loved to have seen how well she could have done in a proper series.

6) Mario Marconi (Big Brother 9)

The status of Mario Marconi to most casuals is as a goofy unlikable buffoon who proved irritating to the masses and helped to stifle the growth of his girlfriend at the time Lisa, who herself would go on to be a breakout character in Big Brother 9. Whilst I do understand some of these grievances with Mario I also feel that people overlook a lot of the positive sides of the character as well, as once his unbearable week 1 side departed the show we were left with one of the most hilarious and deluded characters the show has ever seen. Mario was for all extensive purposes Big Brother's version of David Brent, always trying to be seen to do the right thing but always making a fool of himself in the process, such as his health and safety warnings over the house due to his care over blind housemate Mikey, which left him looking like a clown in the process as well as his delusions of grandeur over the 14 million fans that were supporting him outside of the house, it left Mario as an unintentionally hilarious goof figure which was brilliantly fun to watch, and combined that with cringeworthy antics with Lisa which helped to add the cherry to the cake. But for all the buffoonery I also felt there was a good person behind Mario, he always looked out for Mikey because of his disability and he was one of the people to come out positively over Spit-gate. He likely would have gotten irritating had he of stayed longer, but his five weeks in the show were great fun and Mario was a wonderful character.

5) Federico Martone (Big Brother 4)

The myth that is perpetrated around Big Brother 4 was the moment that the show found itself on the way to becoming the worst series of Big Brother ever was the moment in which Jon Tickle lost his place in the Big Brother house as part of the controversial week 4 double eviction, but whilst Jon's departure was fatally damaging to the series I felt that as much of the reason for the series' failure came down to losing Federico along with him, and in some cases arguably more so. For the first four weeks of the series Fed was the dominant villain figure within the show, a sleazy womaniser who would often cause controversy over his comment about women, whilst I don't agree with Fed's comments it made for a great antagonistic figure for the show to root against, which is essential in any Big Brother series especially one as passive as Big Brother 4. But Federico also combined this with a funny side which led to a rather strange endearment towards him, his flirting with Big Brother in an Avid Merrion accident were funny moments, as was the way in which he would inadvertently lose nearly every shopping task for the housemates. Fed isn't the greatest housemate ever, but Big Brother 4 suffered through his loss, arguably more so then it did with the loss of Jon.

4) Karly Ashworth (Big Brother 10)

During Big Brother 10 it was nearly impossible to speak positively about any of the so called 'Team Pretty' alliance, but now that the smoke has cleared I can finally confess how much I loved Karly during that series. Sure Karly had a bitchy and catty side in the house, as well as being one of the main instigators of the resent towards Freddie, but I found her a lot more appealing and likable then any of the other members of the group, and certainly more engaging then the likes of Kris, Charlie or Lisa as well as lacking some of the pure venom that would come from the others.. Karly added this with some great funny moments which defused a lot of grief that may have been directed at her , she could talk at 200mph and her inarticulate ramblings, especially those in the diary room were rather funny and quite snarky as well, and was beginning to build a bit of a core fan base before her eviction in week 6, one which I consider one of the most underrated BB evictions ever. Karly both delivered as a snarky tweener as well as a great villain to root against, but because of her low placing and the more vile behaviour of other BB10 villains has criminally become lost in the shuffle.

3) Lea Walker (Big Brother 7)

Big Brother 7 has become somewhat of an Allstar series when it comes to recognisable and famous housemates, being home to the likes of Nikki, Aisleyne, Pete, Glyn, Imogen and Grace to name but a few, but for me one great name thatalways gets overlooked criminally when it comes to that series was Lea, a housemate who had an amazing amount of complexity and intrigue compared to any other contestant in the series, watching Lea at times wasn't the most enjoyable thing in the world, but the one thing it never was with her was boring. The most amazing thing when looking back at Lea as a housemate was just how many storylines she had during her 6 week stay in the house, firstly as one of the many women fighting over Pete's heart as well as her fantastic relationship with Richard (aka Dicky and Dolly( which saw them take up the mantle as the house parents, along with this was also her feud with Aisleyne and the almost Mrs Robinson like relationship between herself and Glyn. On top of this however Lea also had a weaker and more sensitive side which was engaging to the viewer, here was somebody who was deeply unhappy with herself and saw herself as this almost tragic figure, at times I did consider whether it was right for Lea to be cast in the show, but it made the moment when she left the house to unanimous acceptance such a brilliant one and completed her story arc brilliantly.

2) Ahmed Aghil (Big Brother 5)

This placement is not one based on complexity or depth, nor is it one based on how good he was as a protagonist or an antagonist. The main reason why Ahmed Aghil is number 2 on this list stems simply on how entertaining he was, think of any of the iconic and funny moments of that series and nearly all of them will revolve around Ahmed in some way, be it his smashing of the plates in reaction to the wake-up alarm, his attack on the mannequin that the housemates had built, his diary room rant against Marco ("I hate him!") and his disruptive behaviour during the boot camp task which in the process helped to make it one of the most iconic tasks of all time Big Brother history. Ahmed nearly always had a way of stealing any scene in which he was involved in during that series, and when this was a series which included Victor Ebuwa that has to be considered impressive. Ahmed's lack of relevance to the story of the series and his comparative lack of involvement in the Jungle Cats vs Lipgloss Bitches does mark him down a bit, but in some ways he didn't need to be massively involved, he was light relief with some great fun moments as well as a fantastic villainous side that he demonstrated during his boot week. Amazing, Hero, Mega, Easy and Delirious, Ahmed said it about himself and I am in full agreement.

1)Sree Desari (Big Brother 10)

Being the most underrated housemate from the criminally overlooked Big Brother 10, Sree was always going to be a contender to win this ranking, but what tipped the scale fully in his direction for me was that when looking back over these contestants three themes really stood out for me for being great contestants; relevance to the plot of their series, complexity and depth as well as unintentional hilarity, not only did Sree contain all these but he had them in droves, he had one of the most compelling and car crash showmances in the show's history, was an incredibly important character during Big Brother 10's early stages and managed to be as infuriating as he was intriguing to watch, and managed to do all this in only 4 weeks. Sree's relationship with Noirin was pure car crash television, amazingly compelling and engaging but all at the same time leaving you with this mix of sympathy for Sree because of his lack of awareness over the relationship and annoyance over how clingy he got around her, topping this off with the delusion that he was a womaniser who could pull most women in the house. Sree was also great from a social standpoint too, walking a fine line as somebody who desperately sort association with the house minority and saw himself as part of that but was in relaty as much of an outsider as those he was targetting himself. It made for a character that was rather complex and dynamic, and when you take into account how much Sree did and how important he was despite being in the house for such a short time I am left baffled why he doesn't get more recognition, and that is why I consider Sree Big Brother's most underrated housemate.

Top 30 Worst Big Brother Production Decisions or Twists (Part 3)

Well we come to part three of our trawl through the worst of all things Big Brother, listing the twists and production choices that production should all out avoid come Big Brother 14, 20 of these twists have proven infuriating enough, so it goes to show how badly mishandled and controversial the top 10 must be. With that being said we shall begin. Brace yourselves people, this is going to be a bumpy ride:

10) The double eviction in week 4 causes Jon and Federico to be evicted on the same night (Big Brother 4)

Now I do understand that Big Brother 4 was a much more innocent time in the franchise's history and the likelihood was that this double eviction was planned weeks and months before the series actually took place, but that cannot defend the fact that this was a terrible production decision which ultimate proved to be the final nail of the Big Brother 4 coffin. Even from an early stage it was obvious that Big Brother 4 was proving to be an underwhelming experience, with Jon and Federico being the only contestants providing anything in the way of entertainment value, Jon through his lovable nerd qualities and Federico through his status as a roguish antagonist who was beginning to build something of a fan base, so the idea of having a double eviction with both facing the public vote was almost show suicide from production, as due to the flaws of vote to evict it would guarantee that at least one of the two (or both as it proved) would be leaving the show, and in the process leave behind a chasm of entertainment which the first few weeks had proven the other housemates could not fill. A double eviction in any other week of BB4 would have been fine, but to have it on a week where your two biggest characters were nominated was simply entertainment suicide.

9) Conor is not removed following 'epilator-gate' (Big Brother 13)

This for me was a disgusting moment, and one that for me should have been dealt with almost immediately, and the fact that production failed to do so in my eyes showed incompetence from production, insane amounts of favouritism towards Conor as well as sending out a terrible message to viewers of the show, were production trying to imply that the threatening of sexual abuse to a woman was an OK act? because that was how it came across to me and many other Big Brother viewers. Had Conor of been a larger and more prominent personality within the show I could have understood Channel 5's reasoning for keeping him around, but the fact was that up until that point Conor was a largely irrelevant and unpleasant figure within the house who was in all reality rather disposable, and his loss wouldn't have made little difference in the story of Big Brother 13 up until that point. The failure to remove Conor ended up leaving a dark cloud over what was a rather good series, and the fact that it was Conor himself who ended up winning £50,000 as part of the controversial White Room twist left us feeling that there was injustice that somebody who had behaved so vilely was being rewarded for his actions.

8) Live Feed is axed (Big Brother 10)

This production decision didn't have much to do with influencing the quality of the overall series,in fact I would go as far as to list Big Brother 10 as one of my favourites, but the cancelling of Live Feed helped to play a massive part in isolating a large amount of Big Brother's casual audience and in turn arguably helped lead to the show's axing by Channel 4. In my eyes as well as the eyes of many others Live Feed is one of the most essential aspects of Big Brother as a franchise, and eliminating it also eliminates one of the main selling point of the show which is the idea of the public having the ability to watch over the contestants at any time. As well as this axing live feed also led to a stagnation of press interest within the show, which in turn led to a lack of interest from the casual audience and as a result dented Big Brother 10's ratings, causing it to become the least watched series of the Channel 4 era.

7) Live Feed is axed... again (The Channel 5 era)

Quite obviously this has much in common with the previous entry, but ranks much higher namely because of the stubbornness of Channel 5 over the issue and the lack of logic in their decision. Channel 5 would have seen that the axing of live feed by Channel 4 for Big Brother 10 led to a significant hit in terms of the ratings, as well as how much the series regained a large amount of lost audience following it's reinstatement for Big Brother 11, so to decide to once again axe this factor of the show, and moreso then that eliminate it entirely, lacked logic and common sense on behalf of Channel 5. As well as this the decision to axe live feed came into conflict with Channel 5's claim that they wanted to incorporate social networking within the show, as the involvement of a live feed within a series would have been beneficial to social networking through buzz generated on Facebook and Twitter respectively. As well as this it generated cynicism against Channel 5 as a broadcaster as it not only went against their claims of interactive live feed coverage but also left the show open to a level of manipulation and distortion unseen previously, as the cover-up of Rylan's departures during CBB11 showed.

6) The all-female launch night (Big Brother 8)

In some ways I can respect this for being one of the few attempts during Channel 4's later era of embracing Big Brother's status as a social experiment, but in spite of that however this twist proved to be a major mistake and one that was unneeded following the negativity of Shilpa-gate. The main reason for this twist being a disaster stemmed from the way it alienated the target audience of the show, Big Brother had known from voting patterns and viewer feedback of how resentful the voting public were to women, and particular more image conscious women which dominated the launch cast, so to have a house full of females isolated the important core audience of the show, added to this was the fact that having a primarily young all female cast also limited the diversity and social intrigue that Big Brother as a franchise thrives on, which further hampered the casual viewer's desire to tune in. The other major issue stemmed from the motive of the all female launch night in the first place, had the twist been played out in a much more psychological way focusing on the incorporation of men into a hostile male environment I feel that the twist had a lot of potential to be engaging and interesting, but instead it's real reasoning was to try and create a shallow squabbling match between the women over Ziggy, which in itself failed.

5) Jayne is punished for persistent rule-breaking by having everybody BUT HER put up for eviction (Big Brother 7)

This for me is a perfect example of production focusing on short term fixes to solutions without thinking about the long term impact that their decisions may have. The decision to punish Jayne in this way was incredibly flawed from both a social context and from an entertainment context was incredibly flawed from the outset. In terms of the former production would have known from Jayne's self orientated behaviour that a punishment such as this was never going to make any impact or influence her behaviour positively, the major grievance however was from an entertainment context however, by punishing Jayne in this way it guaranteed that a much more important and relevant character would be leaving the show in her place, with the likelyhood being that it would be one of Aisleyne or Nikki, both of which had massive fan-bases and were engaged in a major feud with each other. Whilst I do believe Jayne added some much-needed energy into BB7's mediocre middle stages the fact that a major character such as Nikki was sacrificed to protect her was a major misjudgment from production, especially as Jayne never built any kind of fan base and was out anyway the week after.

4) The Halfway House (Big Brother 8)

This was just a farcical mess to watch throughout the week, and was arguably the most painful week of Big Brother that I have ever had the displeasure to have witnessed, particularly from a production point of view. The idea of doing a second 'other house' twist after the failure of Big Brother 7's 'house next door' was in itself a poor decision, but the way in which production chose to continually move both the main housemates and the halfway housemates around with twist after twist to manufacture the ideal result from themselves stemmed of cynicism, blatant manipulation and bias, as well as being incredibly unfair on the halfway housemates who were left with no real chance to prove themselves as housemates. While I may have understood this amount of manipulation for a significantly important character none of the current BB housemates at the time provided us with anything similar to that, BB8 had proven to be a disaster and the idea of five new faces freshening up proceedings over some of the series' deadwood would have been a welcome change, and for production to choose to keep their current crop and dispose of two of the newbies almost immediately made me question just what the point of the whole exercise was. This twist was badly organised, incredibly unfair and ultimately pointless.

3) The Goody family enter the house (Celebrity Big Brother 5)

I know the term 'fatal mistake' is thrown around far too frequently these days, but this is one of the biggest examples of a fatal mistake that I know of from a television context, a decision which ultimately led to the single biggest controversy in UK television history and in my view led to the death of Big Brother as a franchise. Even before 'Shilpa-gate' erupted however the decision to bring the Goody family into the house was riddled with flaws; it was incredibly biased towards Jade and her family as it caused an obvious voting bloc which could control the house proceedings, it damaged the positive and largely highbrow ethos of the CBB5 house at the time and in the process pushing the show incredibly downmarket whilst also partially causing the departures of Donny and Ken, two of the show's biggest characters up until that point. The twist also led to a major over-promotion of the family both on the show and in the show's advertising, shunning the other contestants in the process; Jackiey was attempted to be portrayed as a lovable rogue figure in spite of none of the British public buying into it whilst Jade was given almost Rylan-esque levels of coverage and a golden protaganist edit, and it was Channel 4's insistence with sticking with this edit that led to their reluctance to deal with the bullying of Shilpa which in turn caused the media outcry over her bullying that followed. Even without Shilpagate the Goody family's entry would have made this list, but the fact it caused something as fatally damaging at Shilpa-gate locks it this highly.

2) Despite previously being evicted Nikki is allowed to return to Big Brother 7 with a chance of winning (Big Brother 7)

Now I know that Nikki Grahame is one of the most divisive and controversial contestants ever, as well as one of the biggest personalities the show has ever had, but there cannot be a denial that the decision to allow for her return proved to be one of the most single-handedly damaging moments in the franchise's history. Firstly you have to think about the time that this twist was taking place, Big Brother was at the time still one of Britain's biggest TV shows and still held somewhat in high regard from a credibility point of view, but following this twist nobody could truly ever trust the Big Brother franchise in this same manner, be it TV regulators or fans of the show itself, and led to a massive fall in voting revenue as viewers were scared off voting in eviction through fears of a similar stunt taking place. From an entertainment point of view it was a dud too, as Nikki was too aware of what made herself popular first time around and attempted to replicate that on her return, making her tantrums and rants appear very contrived and false, and harming her popularity in the process. It says a lot when producer Phil Edgar-Jones considers this twist the worst decision he ever made in his career.

1) The quadruple eviction (Big Brother 11)

It's quite appropriate that the worst BB twist ever should also be the last BB twist, as it is a tribute to how poor and how manipulated and badly constructed BB became, it is also a twist which shows my eligibility points clearly, it was poorly planned, it made people question the integrity of the programme and it was severely detrimental to the show on an entertainment value. The simple question that needs to be asked was what was the reason for this taking place in the first place? Production had in their hands what could have been one of the greatest Big Brother finales of all time with the strong and obsessive fan bases of Josie, John-James, Corin and Sam Pepper going against each other in an all-out tour de force which would have proven exciting for the viewer as well as generating incredibly amounts of revenue for Channel 4, and yet production for some reason chose to sacrifice this by utilising the double eviction and getting rid of Corin, John-James and Sam Pepper in one clean swoop and in the process give Josie one of the easiest victories ever in one of the most tedious finales of all time, in the process also exposing major favouritism and bias from production. Whilst in retrospect it could be seen as the move which cause Channel 5 to impliment vote to save during their era it came at the cost of what could have been one of the great BB nights, and for that reason I consider it the worst production decision ever.

So that is the list ladies and gents, 30 of Big Brother's worst moments have been scoured and scorned over and Channel 5 now have a checklist of what not to do come Big Brother 14, fingers crossed that we don't see a repeat of any of these and instead enjoy a great series of Big Brother.

Top 30 Worst Big Brother Production Decisions or Twists (Part 2)

In this post I continue my personal countdown of what I consider to be the worst production decisions or twists that the Great British Public have had to endure at the hands of Big Brother's wonderful production team. In part 2 we countdown from 20th place all the way to number 11, with part 3 focusing on the top 10.

With that being said let us begin:

20) Faye's sister Jem enters the house (Big Brother 12)

This is the second of my 'relative of a housemate enters the house' updates in this ranking, with BB10's Isaac being the first mentioned in part one, and in many way's the issues with Jem as a housemate were almost identical to that of Isaac when he entered the house. Due to the fact that Jem was a non-auditionee as well as somebody who had little emotional connection to the show was unable and unwilling to embrace the concept in the way that a true applicant would have, and arguably the casting of Jem robbed the place of somebody who would have treated the experience with much more enthusiasm. The other major issue however came with Jem's performance as a housemate itself, although his stay was short you can make the arguement that Isaac did have some fun moments and could have been a bigger character had he of stayed around longer, whereas Jem spent the large majority of her time in the show as a largely dreary and negative presence who helped to stifle a lot of the fun in Big Brother 12 at the time before her emergence as pseudo 'villain of the week' following Anton's eviction. Whilst I do admit to liking some of the complexity in the relatioship between her and Faye I found her entry into the show ultimately pointless, especially considering what she brought as a housemate.

19) The Speidi and Rylan show (Celebrity Big Brother 11)

Now I understand in the television industry that you need to cash in and promote your biggest characters and your biggest names for a reality television series such as Big Brother, but in my eyes the over promotion of this feud ended up crossing this line and ended up descending into saturation, which ultimately came at the expense of the quality of the series as a result. Whilst I did find some elements of the Speidi and Rylan feud interesting, in particular the contrast the differences between British and American interpretations of Reality Television I felt that the feud was simply too over-promoted for it's own good, and came at the expense of an entire cast that ended up being blatantly ignored. Now I know some may argue that the reason Speidi and Rylan were so heavily focused on was because the other housemates weren't doing enough but from the snippets we saw and heard this wasn't the case, Razor and Toadie's discussion over the women which caused the nomination rule break hinted at resentment towards the house females whilst we also saw snippets of Toadie's grievances over the house pecking order, both of which could have been given focus. Instead however production chose to focus on a feud which ended becoming incredibly tedious, drawn out and by the end left me hating both parties involved equally, and in the process ruining what could have been a good series.

18) First night nominations (Big Brother 4)

 Now I know that in terms of production Big Brother 4 was a much more innocent time, and that the likelyhood is that twists during those days were likely planned weeks and months before rather then on the fly, but that doesn't hide the fact that this was a poorly thought out idea which ultimately proved to be to the detriment of Big Brother 4 as a series. The idea of having nominations on the first night of the show does sound good on paper, but is ultimately flawed because it leads to the larger and more extravagant personalities on launch night becomming immediate targets without any chance to mellow and integrate themselves into the group, even from launch night it was evident that Anoushka, Federico and Jon were the three biggest personalities and the most potential to be breakout characters, and the fact was we were going to lose one of them after one week (no way was Scott leaving) and in the process do a lot of damage to the series. A show such as Big Brother should do everything it can to keep it's big personalities and yet a twist like this seemed to be designed to intentionally lose them.

17) Billi's nominations are cancelled AFTER nominations have taken place (Big Brother 8)

Now in retrospect this was a good decision which I can support, Charley was a character who pretty much single handedly made Big Brother 8 watchable, whereas Billi would go on to become one of the most annoying and deluded post-show attention seekers that the show has ever had, however from a short term point of view this was a decision which helped to strain the last ounce of credibility from the Big Brother franchise as well as alienate many more viewers. In the aftermath of Shilpa-gate and Emily's ejection production should have been doing everything they could to attempt to try and appease an increasingly cynical audience, and the voting out of Charley, who at that point was the public's enemy at the time, would have gone a long way to do that. Manipulating the process in such a blatant way as this just helped to upset those much needed casual viewers, and in the process dented the ratings and set about a decline in the public perception of the show. Plus it wasn't as obvious at that point that Charley was needed to make the series bearable, and in my eyes the show could have afforded to lose her at this point, especially as someone such as Billi ironically enough had the potential to take up the mantle as the series villain. I do stress this was a good move in retrospect, but undeniable fatally damaged the show's remaining credibility.

16) Fake Week (Big Brother 8)

This twist for me is symbolic of two things; the first being how a good twist can be ruined by incompetent mismanagement and how devoid of focus and erratic the production of Big Brother 8 was. Whilst Fake Week sounded like a good idea it began to fall apart very quickly, firstly actress Thaila Zucchi simply wasn't good enough to pull off her character of fake housemate Pauline, her Australian accent regularly slipped and her stories never matched up, bad enough in any series but with Big Brother 8 being some of the most savvy and cynical housemates in the show's history it was almost fatally flawed from the beginning. Added to this for all the hype and buildup that fake week gave us Thaila's involvement in the show was rather poor, she was regularly given instructions to attempt to stir up the house dynamics and quite simply refused to pull them off, which in the process rendered the whole situation pointless and eventually led to the twist being pulled midway through the week, which in turn led to more questions about the competence and credibility of the show's production team.

15) The White Room (Big Brother 13)

Now I'll admit the payoff to the white room was in my opinion fantastic television, but my god what a slog we had to go through to get to it. Even though I am somebody who considers Big Brother 13 to be one of the better Big Brother series I cannot deny that the White Room episodes are some of the worst in the franchise's history. The first issue with the twist stems from the casting choices for the white room twist, it should have been obvious based on the first 8 weeks of the show that Conor, Luke S and Sara weren't the most interesting housemates of the series, and yet they were being trusted to carry show for a weeks worth of television, and quite simply as a result the television question ended up as incredibly tedious. The other major issue stems from the decision to incorporate the show's prize money as part of the twist, had the twist involved a separate £50,000 the backlash may not have been as great as it was, but because of the way that this twist was set up an undeserving housemate was going to be rewarded with half of the winner's prize money in spite of doing very little to earn it, especially comparative to the winner. The twist may have sounded good on paper, and the tension in it's climax was fantastic, but it was riddled with injustices and unfairness which proved isolating to the show's audience.

14) Rex's girlfriend Nicole enters the house (Big Brother 9)

The third and final 'relative enters the house' twist on this list, and by far the one which was the most infuriating. In my eyes the decision to enter Nicole into the show had two main flaws which proved to be detrimental to BB9 as a series; the first stemmed from Nicole herself, whilst Jem had been relatively annoying and dreary Nicole in comparison was just plain infuriating, threatening to quit on multiple occasion and bringing the house's ethos down with continual whining and tantrums whenever she failed to get her way, and once again made the viewing public question production's abilities by placing someone into the show who had zero interest in being there. The second major stemmed on the impact that Nicole's entry had on Rex, who was quickly establishing himself as a lovable rogue villain character with an increasing fan base, placing Nicole into the house completely stifled Rex's momentum and practically derailed him as a housemate. Placing Nicole into the house achieve little in the way of entertainment and harmed the show's best character, not a good decision whatsoever.

13) John is given a free pass to the final on the first night (Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack)

Being a largely unwatched E4 spinoff series maybe I should go a bit easy on Celebrity Hijack, but that does not for me hide the fact that the show's opening night twist was deeply unfair cast a cloud over what was a rather overlooked BB outing. Whilst I do admit that the Matt Lucas designed launch night twist was very entertaining, and helped give rise to other secret earpiece launch night tasks used by Channel 5, the reward which came for John as a result of it, namely a free pass to the final, was excessive and gave John a massively unfair advantage over the others. Whilst other housemates were forced to engage with the stresses of the Big Brother nomination and voting pressures John was free to sit back and coast to the finale with little trouble, added to this the launch night twist was also unfair as it gave John a major pedestal over the others in terms of exposure and prominence, and arguably proved to be the major factor in his largely underwhelming victory.

12) Emily is ejected as an over-reaction to Shilpa-gate (Big Brother 8)

Now I understand that Channel 4 needed to be seen as zero tolerance when it came to racism following Shilpa-gate, but this in my eyes was a major over-reaction which proved to be more detrimental to Channel 4 then it did beneficial. The major issue with this was simply that in context what Emily said to Charley was not worthy of an ejection from the house,especially not one in the middle of the night, in my eyes the situation could have easily been dealt with behind doors without getting out to the media, as well as this Emily was up for eviction that week and would have very likely gone that week anyway, so the long term damage that the incident may have caused wouldn't have taken place. By ejecting Emily Channel 4 inflicted more unneeded attention onto themselves and further damaged the public perception of the show. The fact that more people complained about Emily being ejected rather then the racial slur itself is telling of how badly Channel 4 misjudged this incident.

11) Shahbaz is allowed to compete despite his poor mental health (Big Brother 7)

Whilst I do accept that Shahbaz was one of the main reasons why Big Brother 7's first week was so action packed and drama filled I have to admit to feeling uncomfortable with Channel's handling of him as a housemate. Even from the outset it was obvious that Shahbaz was not mentally strong enough to handle to pressures of being within the Big Brother environment, and it was in my eyes completely irresponsible of production to place a contestant that was so obviously mentally weak into an environment like that, and as a result made people question in much more detail the ethics of Big Brother as a franchise, especially when you also take into account the mental disorders of Nikki Grahame, Lea Walker and Sam Brodie also. I do respect Channel 4 for realising their mistake and pulling Shahbaz from the programme, but the fact the remains that he should have never been allowed in their in the first place.

So there are another10 disastrous decisions at the hands of the Big Brother production team, but what do I consider to be the 10 worst ever? Stay tuned to this blog to find out.

Top 30: Worst Big Brother Production Decisions or Twists (Part 1)

As a new series of Big Brother dawns on us again on Channel 5 we can come to expect much of the same when it comes to the grandaddy of reality television be it controversy, over the top personalities and more often then not production decisions that quite simply leave us scratching our heads and looking between ourselves with bemusement. For a show that prides itself on it's over-reliance of production twists it's alarming to see just how many of them have ended up being underwhelming or backfiring in the faces of the show's producers with farcical results.

 This ranking is my own personal opinions of the worst twists and production decisions that the show's loyal fan base have had the misfortune of bearing witness to, being split into three parts each counting down part of the list respectively. I want to stress that this my own personal list and there may be elements of this list which you disagree with, but the internet would be a boring place if we all agreed on the same things (just ask China).

With that being said, let us begin:

30) Mario and Steph's fake 'marriage' (Big Brother 9)

On paper this had the potential to be a good twist; the idea of Mario and Steph having to pretend to be a fake couple to decieve the rest of the house had both the potential to be engaging to watch as well as great comedic potential in having poor Steph forced to work with a buffoon like figure like Mario was, but the decision to hold a fake wedding ceremony ended up taking this idea and pushing it in a direction which was tacky and insulting to the viewer's intelligence (as well as the other housemates). Added to this another problem with this twist was the way in which production chose to change the result of the task at the last minute so that Mario and Steph, as well as associates Luke and Lisa, would fail and face the public vote, arguably as a means of attempting to save emerging show villain Alexandra. This in turn was flawed for two reasons, the first being that production were willingly giving up one of the four characters which they had spent nearly the whole week building up and getting the public to care about whilst the other was that Alexandra, the contestant in which they were attempting to save by changing the result, was very obviously a ticking time bomb whose time in the house was going to be short anyway, and simply it was not worth going to such lengths to protect her in the way that production did, particularly at the expense of either Mario or Steph, both of which demonstrated potential to much more mulch-faceted personalities.

29) The £100,000 giveaway (Big Brother 8)

Should I really have an issue with a normal likable guy with a poorly mother being given £100,000? From an ethical point of view certainly not but from the view of interesting television, which is what we watch Big Brother for then certainly yes. This twist is in many ways symbolic of the flaws of Big Brother 8 as a series; a collection of poorly thought out and needless twists solely for shock value with no though given to their repercussions. The twist received little to no buildup and during the actual live show itself lacked any kind of drama and tension that a live show such as this should have done, it was at the end of the day a nice likable man getting £100,000 for doing very little, which you can imagine doesn't sound like particularly interesting television. The fact that the twist also received almost nothing in the way of repercussions and was seldom spoken about by either the housemates or the production team should symbolise just how poorly this twist ended up failing.

28) The cast of Big Brother 12 (Big Brother 12)

When Channel 5 took over running of the Big Brother franchise back in 2011 it was obvious that they would have to attempt to do something different with the show to attempt and regain interest from the British public, their attempt to do so however, something most obviously symbolised with the Big Brother 12 cast, proved to be more detrimental then it would beneficial. Channel 5's motives stemmed from attempting to attract a more youth orientated audience similar to that of scripted reality shows such as Geordie Shore and The Only Way Is Essex, and in the process casted a youthful and more TOWIE derived cast which prided itself on having no housemates over 30. The problem with this was that the youth audience which Channel 5 obsessed itself with simply didn't catch on, and in the process the youthful cast only ended up isolating the older and more hardcore audience that Big Brother had built up for itself during the Channel 4 era. Added to this was that the youthful cast also proved harmful to the show on an entertainment side. Big Brother had been a format which sold itself on bringing extreme personalities from different walks of life together, and instead what the show had was a group from vaguely the same areas of the country of similar age ranges and similar levels of youth and profession, which simply doesn't give us the contrast and diversity the show needs. 

27) The failure to punish Siavash for persistent rule-breaking (Big Brother 10)

This for me is one of many examples of Big Brother's diminsihing lack of authority during the later years of the Channel 4 era and has began to be subsequently seen during the Channel 5 era also. Whilst I understand that Siavash was a major character during Big Brother 10 and particular it's later stages the fact remains that by that point he had mentally taken himself out of the process and was doing everything in his power to disrupt the show's proceedings, and in my eyes if a housemate is blatantly breaking the rules in the way Siavash was during BB10's later stages they should be removed from the process. The fact that production allowed Siavash to get away with this by giving him such weak punishments led to Siavash making his rule breaks more blatant knowing that he would never be truly condemned for it but also it convinced future housemates that they too could abuse and get the upper hand on Big Brother as an entity, which is completely against what Big Brother should be about.

26) Noirin's boyfriend Isaac enters the house (Big Brother 10)

This is the first of many 'relative/ boyfriend of a housemate enters' type of twists that makes the list, and personally this one I consider the most pointless and least relevant of all of them. My first gripe with Isaac's entry stemmed from Isaac's attitude towards the show, he had never seen Big Brother before in his life time (let alone auditioned) and had no interest in engaging himself within the process aside from reaquainting himself with Noirin (demonstrating by him leaving almost immediately after her eviction) and took a potential housemate place away from somebody who would have cared about the show much more. The other grievance stemmed from the way that Isaac's entrance helped spoil what could have been the best eviction of the series, that week's Noirin vs Marcus eviction had looked set to be a closely fought eviction between two of BB10's biggest characters and instead as a result of Isaac it led instead to an all but guaranteed Noirin eviction. Whilst I do appreciate that Isaac's entry did lead to a symbolic ending to Noirin's man-eater storyline and admit Isaac had some fun moments I just found the whole thing to be needless tinkering and pointless, especially considering Isaac left anyway after three days.

25) Big Brother 10's launch night (Big Brother 10)

Now I'll admit I do have a soft spot for BB10 as a series, considering it one of the most overlooked and underrated series of them all, however if you want a reason why it was overlooked look no further then at the weak launch night that opened the series. Launch night is always considered as the most important episode of any Big Brother series, and a combination of a controversial cast for that series and the inability to give a full house tour due to the 'No-Housemates' twist led to the entire show feeling weak, devoid of personality and incredibly lackluster, and no matterhow good the rest of the show may be it will only help to lose those casual fans that are much needed for ratings. The 'no-housemates' twist as well must also be given some criticism as well, as the entire process, which could have been made quite interesting, was reduced to nothing more then parlour games, games of chances and dunking biscuits, not exactly the 'free for all' fight for housemate status that had been promoted to us on launch night.

24) The guru twist (Big Brother 8)

This was just sloppy and amateurish from production in my opinion, as well as demonstrating blatant favouritism towards housemates in a way in which the show really shouldn't have done. Firstly there was the issue with the way in which the gurus in the task were chosen, the contests were incredibly flawed in design and subjective (especially the lie detector task) which only helped to give the impression that the contestants being given guru status were favourites of production as opposed to those who had truly earned the result. The second major grievance with the guru task stemmed from the decision to allow the gurus to decide between the two vote earners that week on which one would go, this too exposed favouritism as it helped Carole, a contestant who was single-handedly helping to stifle the fun in the house, to stay in the process despite a large majority of the public wanting her out. Even had Gerry not have fallen on his sword and asked the gurus to vote him out the likely hood is that they would have done so anyways simply because the format, as well as the gurus chosen, were designed to favour Carole. This was a poorly done twist and another example of how poor BB8 was.

23) The crypt (Big Brother 12)

This task didn't have many repercussions in the house in the long term, but is on this list mainly because of how amateurishly it was produced. Whilst I do understand that the crypt was just a replication of the brilliant bedsit task of BB5, but lacked any kind of tension compared to the original and the poor quality of the crypt's design meant that the housemates in the main house knew that Jay and Anton had not left the process, which rendered the whole task pointless. The twist that came with the crypt however was also a major grievance with the task, as the implication of Jay and Anton's 'ability to change nominations' was chopped and changed so much that gave across a strong perception of incompetence from production as well as favouritism towards Anton and Jay that they were being given a second reprieve within the show despite their poor behaviour making themselves house targets.

22) The treatment of Rachel Rice (Big Brother 9)

This one is entirely personal and the one I'm expecting the most grief about from readers about but I'll try to explain. Whilst I do agree with most people when I say that I don't think that Rachel Rice was the most exciting television in the world I have to admit that I felt particularly uncomfortable with the way in which production looked to victimise Rachel over her lack of entertainment value as a character. Production having biases for or against housemates is bad enough on a show like Big Brother, but what made this worse in my eyes was the fact that producers appeared to have a bias against Rachel simply for being a nice girl, and what kind of message does that send out to viewers as well as potential applicants? The way in which production later condemned Rachel following her victory also showed petulance and immaturity on behalf of production which makes the perception of the production team look even worse.

21) The producers begin bending over backwards to keep John James happy (Big Brother 11)

This entry could in many ways be considered as the evolution of the Siavash entry earlier in the update, but one which I consider worse mainly because it began much earlier in the series and was seen as being much more in favour of John James then in Siavash's case. As with Siavash John James was a housemate whose stubbornness helped to spoil his Big Brother series, namely in his refusal to do tasks and embrace house affairs unless they were catered to his demands, which included him threatening to quit unless his demands were met. Unfortunately production decided to meet all of these and bend over backwards and break their own rules in the process of doing so, including allowing John James to make a phonecall to Nathan from inside the house itself. It, like Siavash, once again showed up Big Brother to be a weak entity with little authority and one which could be manipulated should the right cards be played, and whilst I understand John Jame's importance to BB11 as a series he was in now way bigger then the show, and should have been treated accordingly.

What do you think of the entries so far? Agree or disagree with any? Then don't be afraid to comment.

Entries 20-11 will be posted in due course.

Commentators or Cheerleaders?

Being an avid sports enthusiast who doesn't have much in the way of wealth I find myself exposed to a large amount of televised sport, and as a result I have come to appreciate much about sports broadcasting, in particular the importance of a good commentator is in helping to amplify a viewer's enjoyment of sport as a television experience. Think of any memorable sporting moment of the broadcast era and you'll find that nearly all of them have been accompanied by a wonderful piece of commentary which has helped to make the moment in question even more iconic, be it Kenneth Wolsenholme's cry of 'they think it's all over' as Geoff Hurst approaches the German 18 yard box during the 1966 World Cup final or more recently with Martin Tyler's elongated call of Sergio Aguero as places the ball onto his right foot before powerfully striking to give Manchester City their long awaited league title in the last minute of the 2011/2012 Premier League season.

For all their positives however I do have one major grievance when it comes to sports commentary; the thing in question being bias and prejudice towards particular competitors within a sport. Whilst I understand that this sort of thing is in a way to be expected when it comes to sports commentary, especially when it comes to a sport which has national connotations such as international football, I often feel that far too often then not these national interests end up taking predominance over the professionalism of the commentators to call the sport in as professional and as entertaining a manner as possible. The biggest example of this in recent years was with James Allen's commentary as lead commentator during the 2007 and 2008 Formula 1 seasons for ITV, two years which saw rookie Lewis Hamilton launch himself onto the Formula 1 scene with unprecedented success for a rookie driver in the sport. Being a British broadcaster covering the sucess of a Briton it was obvious for ITV and for James Allen to take this particular party line, but in my view took their coverage to unprecedented levels of fawning over Hamilton which came across as both distracting but also amazingly unprofessional, and in the process distorted a true perception of what were two classic seasons for Formula 1. At that point during his career Lewis Hamilton was in no way near a finished article as a driver or as a media conscious personality, and in those early seasons I found him to be brash, extremely and unjustly cocky as well as accident prone and at times reckless, traits which were overlooked and glossed over by an ITV obsessed with promoting their great British hero. It was in many ways rather sad to see from a broadcasting point of view,especially in regards to lead commentator James Allen who as the face of ITV's coverage, and therefore as the face of what those on the internet dubbed 'Lewhysteria', received a large amount of grief as a broadcaster, grief which in some ways saw him black-balled as a commentator and has only just began to regain his reputation and credibility as a broadcaster. Mr Allen is a very intelligent and a very passionate man when it comes to Formula 1, but he is also evidence of the importance of impartiality in sport broadcasting.

For a colour commentator impartiality is arguably much more difficult, with most colour commentators being ex-professionals the premise of having ulterior motives influencing opinion is much more commonplace, but a true, professional commentator can be able to push aside any of these influences and help in calling a sporting event in as high a professionalism as possible, Andy Gray for example had spells with Aston Villa, Wolves and Everton to name but a few, and yet very little of this can be seen when listening back to any of his broadcasts, and it shows in the high quality of the broadcast as a result. Since Mr Gray was sacked however by Sky Broadcasting there has been an increase however in colour commentators who make little to no effort in attempting to replicate this professionalism, instead choosing to nail colours to their respective masts all with the approval of Sky Sports. An incident in particular which alarmed me about this (and one which helped to instigate the publishing of this blog) came with the decision to appoint Niall Quinn to commentate on last seasons Tyne Wear Derby match. Whilst I have issues with the way that Niall Quinn conducted himself during that match I felt that much more of the blame should fall with Sky for their decision to make this arrangement in the first place. As a playing legend for the club as well as serving as chairman for a number of years Quinn's associations with Sunderland were apparent even before the broadcast took place, and in my view the decision to give him this role to cover a Sunderland game, let alone one as important as the Tyne Wear derby, was certainly a wrong one from Sky, and in the process spoiled the broadcasting of the sport as a television viewer. The Quinn incident however is not the first of these kinds of decisions however, as Sky have taken to doing this with much more of their broadcasting choices, Quinn himself was used as a colour commentator to cover the final televised games of Manchester City's title winning season (City of course being another of Quinn's closest clubs), Gary Neville being used during a number of Manchester United games during the 2011/ 2012 season as well as Soccer Saturday panelists Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas and Matt Le Tissier all being allowed to cover the games of Liverpool, Arsenal and Southampton respectively, all of which doing so with little regard for impartiality and subtlety in their agendas.

Whilst I understand that passion in sport is something that makes the sport more enjoyable it should not come at the expense of impartiality and professionalism, and unfortunately in recent years this has become the case, are we now at a stage in sports broadcasting where with so many forums for opinions and agendas geared towards a very particular viewer viewpoint that we no longer need the same level of professionalism seen from an old-school style of commentator? Maybe it is a decrease in standards of sports commentary in general or maybe it is just me remaining in an idyllic perception of sport which simply down to emotion simply cannot be adhered to.

I'll let you be the judge of that.