Executive producers Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan are again running the show for this latest Big Brother series which makes them the top source of BBOTT details and there’s a lot of it. You’ll want to read the full interview but here’s the rundown on highlights for what to expect.
Big Brother Over The Top will obviously borrow heavily from the CBS broadcast version, but not everything is going to make the leap. “OTEV, Zingbot and a lot of the stuff that people love from the broadcast show — all of those are staying in the broadcast world,” explains Meehan.
Yes, the winner of BBOTT will be decided entirely by the audience with no Jury this season, says Grodner: “The jury is a staple for the summer show and we thought that this would be an interesting experiment that obviously hasn’t been tried here in the U.S. since the beginning.”
Viewers are voting on the winner, but it sounds like they won’t be interfering with nominations as I thought they might with possibly giving some of the HGs safety from danger that week. “There’s a nice balance between the houseguests having control in terms of nominations and evictions and other things within the house,” says Grodner.
Don’t expect the CBS version to lose its Jury just because BBOTT is doing away with it this year. “In the summer edition, we’d like to keep the jury,” explains Grodner.
We know that Alex Willett and Morgan Willett are sisters, but production won’t be forcing that reveal. It’ll be up to the sisters who will be each playing their own game, says Grodner. “They will be playing as two houseguests. They’re going into the house together. The question is how will they choose to play that. Will they be upfront about being sisters? Will they try to hide that?”
The cast is predominantly southern, but both producers say that wasn’t intentional or a targeted region for the BBOTT cast of Houseguests.
As for the house itself, there are changes and things will look different, but this time they had 4 days instead of around 8 weeks. Heh. I’m wondering if someone’s construction budget just got slashed for next season. “It’s a smaller transformation than normal. We took our summer house and modified it as quickly as we possibly could in three or four days. It will have a slightly different look. A couple of the rooms will be the same with maybe some subtle changes. The “Have Not” room will change a bit,” says Meehan.
This Wednesday night’s premiere show is entirely live. The move in is live and will be online for viewers as it happens. “This all will roll out live! They’ll be moving on Wednesday night live! This will be how the show will be. You will see it all!” says Grodner.
And this next part might be something I’m most excited about for Big Brother Over The Top. Remember how most HGs didn’t wake up until around 5PM ET on Wednesdays? Those days are gone. “For the first time ever, we’re going to have curfews for people to be awake! Waking hours! Instead of logging on to see a lot of people sleeping like in the summer.”
This change on sleeping is something I definitely hope they take back from BBOTT for the next Big Brother season on CBS. Big Brother Canada has had announcements about “nap time is over” for those HGs who stayed in bed too long so it’s not like this is impossible or unreasonable to do for the CBS season either. Fingers crossed.
Another thing to get excited about are the live Diary Room sessions. ” We’re going to live stream, but it’s their opportunity to go in there and talk directly to the viewers. [They will be] answering questions that will be given to them in some form. We’re still figuring that out,” says Grodner.
Right now there are only two, one-hour slots in the BBOTT schedule for live DRs. I’m hoping that gets extended quickly to allow a lot more time and discussions in there.
Meehan adds, “The thing we wanted to make sure is that if you’re watching the feeds, there’s still opportunities for you to get inside people’s heads to know what they’re actually thinking, who they’re really being loyal to, who they’re playing. We want to give the houseguests the opportunity to tell viewers what’s actually going on.” This is of course hilarious when compared to those awful, scripted DR sessions that make the CBS broadcast episodes. It’s been years and years since we got authentic DR sessions so this should be interesting.
And finally, will we ever see Over The Top again or is this a one-off just to build hype for CBS’s All Access? Buckle up. “Yeah, if it does well and people like it! We’re kind of breaking new ground. We’re the perfect show to do something like this. Having a big show in this digital world would be awesome,” says Meehan.
So there you go and I hope that gets you excited for Big Brother Over The Top starting on Wednesday night at 10PM ET (7PM PT) only on All Access. Sign-up now for the All Access Free Trial to watch all of the BBOTT events, episodes, and Live Feeds. If this goes off well then we can expect more BBOTT in the future!
0 comments :
Post a Comment