Kruger: Big Brother to be more 'family friendly', 'more emphasis on challenges'

Thanks to regular Ryno_091 for picking up on this.

The Courier Mail has today spoken to upcoming Big Brother and Mornings host Sonia Kruger who claims that the upcoming season of Big Brother will be aimed at a ‘broader audience’ and will have a stronger emphasis on weekly challenges.

“It’s the all-new Big Brother. It’s going to be bigger and better than anything we’ve seen,” Kruger says.

“It’ll be more engaging and appealing to a broader audience because children will be watching and, because Nine is running it every night at 7pm, it has to be family-friendly.”

The news is set to spark some debate. Many fans of the show urged TEN to push it to a later timeslot when they aired the show. A lack of lewd material was considered the downfall of the show, which attributes its success to libel material in other countries.

But fans needn’t worry. The 7PM edition of the show may remain family friendly, a format that works well for shows like MasterChef and The Block; however this does not rule out a possible relaunch of any Uncut or Uplate service.

With Nine running the show on a tighter budget, this possibility looks thin.

While not much else was said on the matter of ‘weekly challenges’, it does seem like a Friday Night Live-esque show is in the works however this may also refer to a bigger emphasis on the show’s infamous weekly tasks.

Big Brother airs on Nine after the Games.

About the author

ENQUIRIES INCLUDING CORRECTIONS, GENERAL COMMENTS OR CONTACT INFORMATION (professional purposes only) MAY BE DIRECTED PRIVATELY TO MY EMAIL ADDRESS: lewdon13@gmail.com

Hey guy's,
If you've stumbled across here, I'm assuming you are as big a fan of reality television as I am! I reported for Throng Australia as their resident Reality Television Commentator from May 2011 to January 2013. I will continue to provide Top 20 Reality Television Star lists for 2013. I'm currently covering the upcoming season of Big Brother on Big Brother 24/7!
I hope you enjoy and if you have anything to say; comments, complaints, praise or whatnot, drop me a PM or comment on the story of interest to you.
Courtney xx
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  • ryno_091

    so basiclly bb kyle and jackie o style wiich i turned off nine need to ge their casting spot on then tyvm 4 the mention courtney i will keep an eye out for more info

  • Courtney Rose Lewdon

    That’s OK Ryno.

    IIR, BB in 2008 tried to be as lewd as possible in the 7PM TSlot. It looked cheesy. Maybe this will work, maybe it won’t. Time will tell.

  • Loz

    Still doesn’t understand why people are blaming Kyle & Jackie O for the dismiss of BB. All they did was host the Sunday & Monday night shows. Its hardly their fault for the shows dismiss.

    Still looking forward to the return. Great that they are focusing on challenges more as I liked that alot (especially loved the time when Gretel went into the house to do a challenge and she tripped over!)

  • Loz

    Still doesn’t understand why people are blaming Kyle & Jackie O for the dismiss of BB. All they did was host the Sunday & Monday night shows. Its hardly their fault for the shows dismiss.

    Still looking forward to the return. Great that they are focusing on challenges more as I liked that alot (especially loved the time when Gretel went into the house to do a challenge and she tripped over!)

  • Courtney Rose Lewdon

    Loz, I kinda agree. They weren’t the demise of the show; the program was alienating its audience well all on its own. But Kyle & Jackio O were brought onto the show for one reason- their profile. They were to be the face of Big Brother and to generate interest.

    They did not successfully do this. With Kyle insulting the housemates as he talked to them and Jackie O allegedly acting cold towards the housemates (I would disagree with this personally) during evictions, they generated a lot of negative criticism on their own terms and it is extremely easy and somewhat commonsense for people to assume that their exclusion from the show could have and would have helped it.

    That’s my take anyway.

    Thanks for the comment, Loz!

  • Loz

    Yeah I guess thats kinda true.

    And your welcome. Sorry for the double post, my computer decided to do it all on its own. lol.

  • ryno_091

    they might not be the demise of bb they played a part in it that was the year i found the most boring the contestants were just not entertaining for me personally kyle and jackie o are overated and in tv terms the kiss of deat except for kyle on agt obiouvsly

    for this to work effectivly nine need a host which can hold their own which sonia can do im starting to warm to the idea of her as host

    we need interesting housemates with loads of varity we dont nessecerily need an uncut show as much as i would like  as adds another layer to the contestants

     they could always have spcial 8:30 shows where its needed say for example if a convo is too racey for pg timeslots but has an inmpact on the storytelling if that makes sense 

  • Courtney Rose Lewdon

    Loz,

    I think I can forgive you. Computers are idiots, haha! But I did like your comment- very well informed!

     

    Ryno,

    I absolutely agree about the host. The host, as I said, will only be on television for about 10% of the entire season. But what I haven’t actually mentioned to this point is how important the portion of the show they will be on is to the entire structure of the show.

    That 10% includes the evictions, the launch, the finale and possible nomination shows. It doesn’t take into account their involvement on special episodes, potential involvement on shows like Uncut and UpLate, and guest spot appearances. But needless to say, they are facing up at the most watched times of the season. Big Brother as a whole could average 800,000; but if you average the viewership of only those shows that the host appears on- idealistically that number will be around a million. So, in that sense, the host is definitely getting a lot of exposure in a quality-over-quantity sort of way which is why I agree with you.

    There is no room for error on these shows. People will make a gaff at any fault Kruger makes wrong because she is so highly exposed. Kruger has in the past made many wrong moves, but a show like Big Brother does give her room to move and hold her own; so if she doesn’t, I think it will be her fault, not the show’s.

    To the contestants, and yes, we do need interesting housemates. An interesting point you make, Ryno, is the idea that there are going to be points in the show that really do need to be shown but will also have to be cut out due to the 7PM timeslot. This presents a problem. These points will contribute heavily to storylines, and simply dumbing it down for the timeslot will in fact look dull and cheap over time.

    This is where an Uncut or UpLate service is needed. Funnily enough, Australia has not yet been caught in the grasps of one particular topic the UK has been divided in since they returned BB to their screens. This topic is a short fire solution to showing ‘all layers’ of the contestants. The live feed.

    In Australia, we have always had a live feed, sometimes we had it free. The UK have had a very shonky history with the service so it was more likely that they were going to have this problem. But here in Australia, Nine wants to cut the budget- and the live feed is a very convenient thing to cut if they want to save some cash.

    I don’t have any interest in a live feed, personally. But I do think this will be the next stage of discussion.