Big Brothe In Australia
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Big Brother is one of the successful and popular reality television programmes which is broadcasted on Network Ten in Australia. This show represents a number of participants who stay at a special house for up to three months. This house is designed so that the contestants have no contact with the outside world and is surrounded by a great deal of cameras and microphones. The housemates, as they are called, share the house, live together and try not to be evicted due to voting by the public in order to be the last remaining to win a large amount of cash prize. This show has techniques that create full humour and drama, even though there is no script, and the powers of the show which encourages audiences to have emotional responses. Big brother is a television program, Robert has argued, that Ѓgblurred categorical and production boundaries between drama and documentary, game show and soap opera.Ѓh (270) Reality television concentrates on ordinary people and a story that is not written, and makes any failure or successes relates to human emotions. In Australian Business Intelligence, it has been reported that Ѓg[an episode of the debut of Big Brother] attracted 1.56 million viewers, the smallest audience for a first show since the series began in 2001. It did pull a bigger share of the 16-to-39-year-old demographic than it did in 2004 though.Ѓh (Shoebridge, 2005) This show seems to be an important part of popular culture in Australian society. But how does Big Brother use its power to get the attention of its Australian audience?
The main reason why Big Brother gathers lots of attention from the whole Australian nation is the housemates. The participants are categorized as healthy Australian people who Ѓgwould be able to cope with the pressure of being locked away for up to there months, able to deal with the cameras on them 24 hours a day, and psychologically complex enough to be of interest (to themselves and the audience) for that amount of time.Ѓh (Roscoe, 317) Therefore, the participants normally are a group of people who are friendly, fun, strong, easy-going, and positive to share their whole time with other housemates for a long time and show everything about them to the public through the cameras and microphones. The people are of course not professional actors or actresses but ordinary people. That is the purpose of the reality television that produces realism for the game show. They are chosen carefully from many auditions and interviews from whole areas of Australia. Choosing people for a real game show is a very unique and different progress from that of a drama. Therefore, these individual different personalities that come together make varieties of stories and events without a script. That brings a great deal of emotions so that show can broadcast all these human emotion to the viewers. In addition, there is certainly no privacy in the Big BrotherЃfs house. There are cameras and microphones surrounded everywhere 24 hours until the last remaining housemate is revealed. The housemates are totally watched everything whole time while they are staying there, and that means everything about them, everything they do, everything they say, everything they feel, and everything they have. Watching someoneЃfs private life is interesting and amusing, and it is up to the audience who are watching this show to choose who will be evicted each week. There is also possibility to gain some pleasure from watching people who are like us [everyone in the public]. Because there are real normal people, not professionals, and there is therefore possibility to identify them. Roscoe has argued that Ѓgvoyeurism is not necessarily the most useful or appropriate way to describe the relation between the audience and the housemates. Perhaps it is more a performance of exhibitionism and a satisfaction of scopophiliac tendencies.Ѓh(315) The housemates understand the primary of the show Ѓemiss nothing, see everythingЃf, so they know they are being watched all the time. They perform towards to the unhidden cameras, for the audience and for each other. The participants need to try anything in order not to be evicted by the audience. As they are Australian, they show their Australian-ness consciously and unconsciously. For example, there are some Australian-ness they show that their characters that are friendly socialized, open-minded and easy-going, and their performances that are working out, swimming, joking and attitudes towards to the other. As English has discussed that Ѓethis is a soap, in which the participants themselves write the script,Ѓf (316) everyone is invited to gaze, and continue gazing. Roscoe has discussed that ЃeBig Brother is a show that is constructed around performance. With 25 cameras and 36 microphones there is literally nowhere to hide. Those who go into the house know that they are there to perform- for each other, and for the audience watching at home either on the Internet or television.Ѓh (317) The housemate perform with each other, at the same time, they need to be away from being nominated for the eviction. They are expected to attempt to do anything to be the last one to get a prize, in this may excuse them for cheating and lying. The really interesting thing is, it has been said, that Ѓgwhile the cameras might pick up such activities, each housemate has to keep such activities hidden from the other housemates. However, as well as managing their images within the house, the housemate also have to perform for the audience who can, potentially, see everything they do.Ѓf (Roscoe, 318)
Audience participating in the show is a new technique to catch and keep viewers to maintain a high rating on a television market. In this show, the significant way to keep this reality television programme popular is turning Ѓgthe experience of being an audience into an active participation.Ѓh (Roscoe, 319) The first strategy is that the reality show uses telecommunications so that the audience interaction lets the audience to choose a direction of the future of a show. The viewers can send short messages services (SMS) with their mobile phone to vote out nominated participants for the eviction every week. They can also receive daily real-time text news direct from the Big BrotherЃfs house, and buy ring tones, pictures for their screen saver. Therefore, the idea of using telecommunication system has enabled viewers to participate in this show using either online voting through Big Brother Online or voting, using short message service from mobile phones.
Telecommunication system like phone voting is not the only way in which Big Brother has become a popular show. Big Brother has allowed audiences for participation through the location and the live eviction show. The Big BrotherЃfs house is located in the Gold Coast, Queensland, in the studio at Dreamworld, and it has provided