The strained and occasionally tumultuous relationship between make-the-public-the-star, ‘reality’ television and the broadcasting authorities rests a little easier in the wake of the Advertising Standards Authority’s confirmation that Channel 4 and associated companies did not ‘fix’ the Golden Ticket draw that allowed model Susie Verrico to enter this year’s Big Brother competition.
The prospect of censure has hung briefly not only over Big Brother itself but over the whole of the Reality TV (surely set to replace ‘military intelligence’ as the world’s favourite oxymoron) industry; executives seeking to breathe new life into rapidly-aging formats may well have had to re-evaluate their entire strategy for introducing plot twists had complaints regarding the randomness, independence and validity of the draw been upheld.
The implication would be that any aspect of a programme judged not to be consistent with both its own advertised standards and procedures as well as with standard practice in such competitions could be investigated as a breach of ASA regulations, with the upholding of any such complaint possibly even leading to the invalidation of a competition’s results.
With the viewer-pays-to-act-as-judge format more popular and widespread than ever – Celebrity Love Island is still a recent (and painful) memory; Lord Lloyd Webber’s How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? has, apparently, answered its own question; Celebrity X Factor seems barely to have been over five minutes and already the public contest is moving into high gear; not to mention, of course, that BB itself will be back on our screens in its celebrity incarnation in a matter of weeks – it’s unsurprising that so much attention has been given to this apparently inconsequential spat between promoter and regulator.
After all, reality TV has faced far more serious accusations of tampering previously – the dispute over Will Young’s Pop Idol victory and last year’s X Factor tactical voting scandal are two examples that leap to mind.
A sneaking suspicion remains, however, that manipulation of a far more subtle kind may still have been perpetrated.
This year’s Big Brother as a competition was largely moribund from day one with support for consistent bookie’s favourite and eventual winner Pete Bennett both within and without the house almost embarrassingly dominant from the outset. This in mind, it seems that the draw-tampering allegations, fairly readily disproved as Channel 4 must have known they would be, did immensely more good than harm in keeping BB firmly rooted on the front pages – even now, a month after the competition’s end (well past the sell-by date of the average RTV offering) the issue still makes headlines.
Coincidence? Or extremely subtle manipulation of the format? Whichever; for me, the truly depressing thing is the realisation that we genuinely could have had any of the Golden Ticket holders grace our screens – and we got Susie. Tea, anyone?
Doug Brett-Matthewson
Sep 20, 2006
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