Courtesy of Daily Telegraph Sydney
Budget betters Big Brother
May 18, 2008 12:00am

THE new series of Big Brother will be its last, according to former contestants, as viewers turn off the once popular reality TV show.

Ratings for this year's series on Network Ten are so dire that last Tuesday night's program was beaten by Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan delivering the Rudd government's Budget on ABC TV.

These results follow Big Brother's disastrous launch two weeks ago, which drew a meagre national audience of 1.51 million.

It was the worst launch in the program's eight-year history.

The daily shows have fallen to as few as 852,000 viewers, with last Sunday's first eviction - which ousted UFO fanatic Saxon Pepper - just reaching the million mark.

In its heyday, Big Brother evictions would attract up to two million people. The 2004 winner, Trevor Butler, said the obvious public animosity towards the program could spell its end.

"This is their last shot. If they don't get the ratings they need this year - and, so far, they're not showing up - I don't think you'll see Big Brother again,'' Butler told The Sunday Telegraph.

Reality television expert and Queensland University of Technology's Associate Professor of Film and Television Alan McKee said the departure of former host Gretel Killeen had damaged the show.

"What made it outstanding was that you always had Gretel Killeen there, who was the show's moral centre,'' he said.

"If you were watching it and somebody was behaving obnoxiously when they came out, you knew that Gretel would tear strips off them.

"Kyle and Jackie O just don't serve the same purpose. Jackie is quite limp and Kyle prides himself on being wrong - he will always say the wrong, obnoxious thing and hurt people.''

Butler pointed to the program's extreme casting as the key toits problems.

"They have got some far-out choices. It's clear they went for shock (value),'' he said.

This year's housemates include Travis, a self-declared young virgin with a high-pitched voice; David, a former cult member; Terri, a 52-year-old outmoded grandmother; party boy Corey Worthington, and Rima, a 1m-tall belly-dancer.

Rima has since left the house, after Brother in ratingsbreaking her leg during a game.

Big Brother 2006 contestant Claire Madden agreed producers had gone too far with this year's casting.

"A quarter of the people in there you are unlikely to meet in a normal situation,'' she said.

"The consensus from the public - who still feel they need to tell me their opinion on everything to do with Big Brother - is that they want to see it stripped back to its natural form and the way it was in series one and two, when it was brilliant.''

Last week, selected housemates were taken to a secluded area, dubbed ``Bali''.

A Big Brother source said this allowed producers to serve alcohol - which they can't, in the presence of 17-year-old Worthington - in the hope that it would lead to sexual activity between housemates and boost ratings.

Stephen Tate, Network Ten executive producer for Big Brother, laughed off suggestions that this would be the program's final season.

"In a fragmenting (TV) market, I think it's been a stellar performance,'' he said.

"Every series tends to J-curve - they start high, fall away a little bit, then climb again towards the end.''

Mr Tate said he was pleased with the casting.

"We wanted a house of extremes. The philosophy this year was about throwing a group of people together into the house who would not normally socialise with each other - so that they all faced challenges,'' he said.

"What we didn't want this year was a clique developing, which we've seen in previous years."