There is something slightly depressing about the suggestion that ITV could be preparing to pull the plug on Big Brother.
The speculation that the current series could be the last, reportedly because of the rising cost of making the show, is understandable from a purely financial perspective. Big Brother is expensive television. It requires a huge production operation, a large cast, weeks of filming and a nightly commitment that few other entertainment programmes demand.
But ITV should be very careful about looking at the show simply as another programme on a spreadsheet.
Because Big Brother does something that television desperately needs right now: it gives a young audience a reason to watch live television.
And that is becoming increasingly rare.
Big Brother has a young audience – and ITV needs it
The decision to move Big Brother away from ITV1 was a significant one. Celebrity Big Brother has also been put on pause, while the civilian series now lives primarily on ITV2 and ITVX.
On paper, that might make the programme look less important.
In reality, it could be the opposite.
Young viewers are not necessarily going to sit down at a scheduled time because a broadcaster tells them to. They have Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Disney+, Prime Video and an almost limitless supply of on-demand entertainment.
Yet Big Brother still manages to create the thing streaming services cannot easily manufacture: a television event that people are talking about at the same time.
And then there is ITVX.
The audience watching Big Brother on demand and through streaming is exactly the demographic broadcasters are desperate to attract. If millions of younger viewers are choosing to stream the programme, ITV should be asking how it can extract even more value from that audience – not whether the show is worth keeping.
Stop judging Big Brother like a traditional TV programme
This is where the future of Big Brother gets particularly interesting.
ITV needs to stop thinking of it solely as an eight-week television series and start treating it as a cross-platform entertainment brand.
The live broadcast is only one part of the proposition.
Look at what happens around the programme. Clips circulate on social media. Arguments become news stories. Housemates become talking points. Memes appear. Viewers debate nominations, evictions and relationships. Entertainment websites write about it. Newspapers write about it.
The programme generates content even when it isn’t on television.
That is incredibly valuable.
There is a useful comparison in the way Saturday Night Live UK is beginning to operate. The live television audience may not always be spectacular, but individual sketches, moments and performances can travel much further online.
That is the model Big Brother should be embracing.
ITV should make more of the moments
The obvious criticism is that Big Brother no longer has the live feed that once made the format such an all-consuming experience.
That is probably not coming back.
But ITV can still recreate some of the feeling of the live feed by being much more aggressive with digital content.
If something brilliant, funny, controversial or completely ridiculous happens in the house, get it online.
Don’t wait for the next night’s highlights show.
Don’t bury it.
Don’t assume viewers will discover it themselves.
Make clips. Push them. Give them context. Let social media do its thing. This is the key thing that does need fixing; Viewers are currently getting episodes of Big Brother: The Group Chat on YouTube, but no clips – although content is posted on Instagram and TikTok, ranking up hundreds of thousands of views for each clip.
SNL UK understands that a television programme can have a life far beyond its linear broadcast. Big Brother has an even bigger advantage because the content is being generated around the clock.
There could be dozens of short-form stories coming out of the house every single day.
ITV should be exploiting that.
The Sky opportunity could be enormous
There is another reason ITV should be thinking very carefully before cancelling Big Brother: the changing relationship between ITV and Sky.
As that relationship develops, there could be a huge opportunity to distribute ITV content across a much wider ecosystem, including ITVX, NOW and Sky’s platforms.
A programme like Big Brother is tailor-made for that environment.
Imagine the series being heavily promoted across ITVX and NOW, while clips and updates are pushed through a revamped Sky Go experience. Suddenly, Big Brother isn’t simply an ITV2 programme.
It becomes a major streaming and social proposition.
And that matters because Big Brother is exactly the kind of programme that can encourage younger viewers to open an app every night.
That behaviour is worth far more to a broadcaster than a single overnight rating might suggest.
ITV has finally listened to Big Brother viewers
There is also a very simple reason why ITV shouldn’t give up now: the producers appear to have finally got the format moving in the right direction.
Viewers have been listened to.
The decision to revert to the public vote to evict was a smart one. The casting has improved. The housemates feel like people viewers actually want to watch rather than simply a collection of potential social media personalities.
And then there are AJ Odudu and Will Best.
The presenters have become a huge part of the show’s identity. They bring energy, personality and genuine star power to a programme that needs to feel like an event.
After spending years trying to work out what the modern Big Brother should look like, it would be bizarre to finally find a formula that works and then decide the programme is too expensive.
Big Brother brings something else ITV desperately needs
There is another benefit that is difficult to put into a traditional ratings table.
Big Brother generates column inches.
It gives newspapers, entertainment sites and social media accounts something to talk about every single day.
For eight weeks, ITV has a programme capable of generating stories, arguments, memes, interviews, reaction videos and celebrity appearances.
That promotional machine has value.
More importantly, it gives ITV2 a regular appointment-to-view programme aimed squarely at a younger audience.
How many other ITV shows can realistically claim that?
And how many broadcasters would love to have a programme capable of pulling millions of younger viewers onto their streaming service?
Don’t throw away one of television’s few remaining live events
The temptation for ITV will presumably be to look at the cost of Big Brother and ask whether there are cheaper programmes that can generate similar ratings.
Perhaps there are.
But that isn’t really the right question.
The question should be: what other programme could ITV replace it with that would deliver the same combination of live viewing, streaming, social media conversation, press coverage and young viewers?
That list is considerably shorter.
Television is increasingly becoming a collection of shows that viewers watch whenever they fancy it. Big Brother is different.
It gives people a reason to watch now.
It creates anticipation for the next episode. It creates arguments online. It makes viewers feel part of something happening in real time.
That is becoming incredibly valuable.
There is still life in Big Brother
ITV absolutely should keep Big Brother.
But it should also evolve it.
Keep the nightly show. Keep the evictions. Keep AJ and Will. Keep listening to the viewers. Keep finding housemates who create genuine conversation.
And then take everything happening inside that house and turn it into a digital content machine.
More clips. More short-form video. More social-first moments. More reasons to open ITVX. More opportunities to push the programme across whatever relationship ITV eventually has with Sky and NOW.
The future of Big Brother may not be a return to the 24-hour live feed of the past.
It could be something more modern: a live television programme surrounded by an enormous stream of digital content.
That is exactly the sort of television ITV should be investing in.
Because if ITV really wants younger viewers, Big Brother isn’t the problem.
It might just be one of the solutions.
Subscribe to us for daily BBUK updates.
Want more TV previews, entertainment news & lifestyle reviews? Subscribe for free:
Discover where to stream the best TV shows and movies. Get fresh entertainment news, streaming guides, and real-life pop culture experiences at WhereToWatch.tv.
Share this post with someone you think would like it…