Apologies for off-topic news, but there’s storm that has been brewing this week about the popular TV show, Celebrity Big Brother, which has allowed racially-inspired bullying onto UK TV screens. Contestants Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O’Meara have spoken about Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty behind her back and to her face in a way that at least 38,000 Britons, including myself, believe is racially prejudiced. The show has lost its chief sponsor Carphone Warehouse over the row, but has more than doubled its viewing figures from the 2.9mn it received prior to this:
The audience for Goody’s post-eviction interview peaked at 8.8 million between 2245 and 2300 GMT, according to unofficial overnight figures.
The show averaged 7.8 million between 2230–2300, while an earlier instalment from 2030–2130 averaged 7.4 million.
They were the highest viewing figures in Celebrity Big Brother’s history and beat the 7.7 million who watched the last non-celebrity final in August — which was Channel 4’s largest audience of 2006.
The Jade eviction edition of the programme on Friday 19th was very clearly fabricated, in my opinion, to allow the culprits out of the storm, despite the notional idea that inmates are isolated from the outside world. I wonder if anyone took this at face value. Highlights of the heavily-scripted show included:
- Jade says in the diary room that she’s worried people will think her racist and starts sobbing;
- Shilpa makes what she calls a statement in the diary room that she doesn’t think that her treatment was inspired by racism;
- Shilpa and Jade meet alone for a hug and make-up;
- Shilpa and Ian “H” Watkins teach each other traditional folk songs — to show that we’re all the same…
- Danielle begs Shilpa for forgiveness on her knees;
- No audience at the eviction: crucially, that means we don’t really know its timing;
- Advert break as soon as Jade is removed from the house to allow for briefings;
- Davina’s interview focuses on bullying not racism.
The Morningstar blog reveals that chief protagonists Jade Goody, Davina McCall, Dermot O’Leary and Russell Brand all share the same PR consultant. (thanks, Drew)
I don’t know what can or should be done about this situation, but I do think that the more everyone knows about this scandal, the better. That’s the motivation for this post.
From the Endemol website, the producers of this crap: “Endemol continues to deliver powerful growth, turnover and profits… Big Brother has enjoyed another strong year. Endemol: always ahead of the game.”
Not this time, fatty.
Technorati: Big Brother, media, TV
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