What to expect from Celebrity Big Brother and Big Brother this summer

Celebrity Big Brother is almost upon us once more (can you believe it has been SEVEN MONTHS?!), and today Big Blagger was invited to meet with Big Brother’s new creative team Paul Osborne and Tamsin Dodgeson to talk all things Big Brother!

Paul Osborne returns as Creative Director after a decade show-running in LA, while Tamsin Dodgson re-joins as Executive Editor. Having worked on multiple series of Big Brother prior to his time in the States, from taskmaster of the very first series in 2000 to Executive Producer of fan-favourite, Big Brother 7 where Nikki Grahame was introduced to the reality TV world, Paul has a close relationship with the show.

Tamsin Dodgson is also back as Executive Editor after her first stint on Celebrity Big Brother: Year of the Woman in January. Tamsin has worked on some of the biggest entertainment formats in the country including, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, The X Factor, The Only Way is Essex and Celebs Go Dating.

Live Feed

Let’s get this one out of the way first – there will be no 24/7 live feed this summer. Channel 5 have already confirmed that limited live coverage will return for the show on eviction nights (and that is it).

Paul mentioned that he would love there to be a 24/7 feed for the show – essentially, that’s what makes Big Brother. However, for reasons above their pay grade this simply isn’t going to happen in the immediate future – but who knows what that future may hold?

Contract Renewal

As expected, Paul and Tamsin were unable to comment on whether Big Brother will return next year. As it stands, Channel 5 are still contracted to air one more Celebrity Big Brother and one more Big Brother. All we were told today is that negotiations are “on going”.

Outside Contact

We voiced our concerns that the most fundamental rule of all has been forgotten about in recent years. While they didn’t go into too much detail, we were told that the house has been designed to ‘keep the outside, out’ – we should see a lot less outside contact this summer.

Shopping Tasks

In recent years, the weekly shopping task has slowly disappeared from the show – and in January it was non-existent. We raised this today, and was told that the shopping tasks WILL be back this summer!

Jackson Townroe, who has previously worked on the show as task master – who last worked on ‘Power Trip’, has returned to the show this year.

Nominations

Viewers will be pleased to hear that the nominations process is also going back to basics this year. Paul mentioned that he is a big fan of ‘classic’ diary room nominations. We also pressed on the fact that we never know anymore how many nominations you need to actually face eviction anymore – apparently, this summer we will know right at the very start what the criteria is.

It was suggested to both Paul and Tamsin that they return to housemates being gathered in the sofa area to nominate one-by-one. We feel this would add back the tension to nominations – imagine what it must feel like to have to sit and look at your fellow housemates after having just nominated two of them for eviction. We are not sure however if this will be taken on board.

Back Door Evictions

The execs do not actually like doing backdoor evictions. However, at times they have too many housemates left and not enough time to evict them so they have to! Potential walkers & ejections are considered prior to launch, and sometimes neither situation actually happens! In this situation, they try to do them as creatively as possible.

The Eye

Have you looked closely at the new Celebrity Big Brother eye? Those eagled eyed ones might have noticed those little bits sticking out from it – well there’s good reason. There is actually another eye on the reverse!

The reverse of the eye is featured on the new title sequence, which feature neon just like we’ve seen in the eye. The titles are, however, completely different to the trailer ads.

Civilian Big Brother

Both Paul and Tamsin are very passionate about the original format and are doing their best to build on January’s series.

They’re trying to find unique characters and new faces rather than reality stars and other media personalities. We mentioned that there is a sometimes a housemate that has appeared on BB, that should have actually appeared on CBB – this line has been crossed at times, which both agreed with.

There will be a short gap in between Celebrity Big Brother ending, and Big Brother beginning – don’t go booking any last minute holidays to fill the gap as the gap is less than a week.

We were also told that while Celebrity Big Brother has an ‘Eye of the storm’ theme, civilian Big Brother will be a totally different show.

Other tidbits

It was mentioned to Paul and Tamsin that fans didn’t take well to some of the changes made to the eviction shows in January.

Tamsin mentioned that they are looking at what worked well and what didn’t. We were told that the format of the show is still being worked on, however they took on board our comments – namely that there is no need for Emma to walk the evicted housemate down the stairs, and that the best bits VT should return to the end of the interview amongst others.

We also mentioned our love of the drone shots that were used in January – while they may look nice and pretty, they do get excessive by Day 4. Maybe a few at the start of the show would suffice, rather that scattered right throughout the show.

There will be a twist at the end of the Celebrity Big Brother launch show – we can however reveal that it WILL NOT involve an ear piece. Phew. The Friday show which is billed as ‘A storm unleashed’ is not live.

Free app voting will not be introduced this summer, it will be the regular phone in number.

There won’t be a new website this summer – it will be getting it’s usual re-skin.

The passion that both Paul and Tamsin have for the show was really apparent today, and we are really looking forward to the return of Celebrity Big Brother next week.

Celebrity Big Brother returns to Channel 5 on August 16th at 9pm on Channel 5.