''Big Brother'' (Dutch TV series)

Big Brother Netherlands
Presenters
Series 6 (2006) housemates
Winner: Jeroen Visser

Runner-up: Sabrina Turfboer

Others: Rik Rovers, Tijn Rovers, Monique de Roo, Semih Turan, Marcia Schouten, Micheline de Reus, Marlies Otten, Egbert Schouten, Etiënne Meulhof, Janine Holder, Milica IJpelaar, Hilde IJpelaar, Marcel Meulhof

Series 5 (2005) housemates
Winner: Joost Hoebink

Runner-up: Roeland (Roel) Dietvorst

Others: Lieske Stokkers, Ingrid Hofland, Nathalie Malherbe, Dido van Kuijk, Rob van Nood, Chantal Braspenning, Menno Liebregts, Joscelyn Savanna Slangenberg, Tanja Slangenberg, Linda Rijsdijk, Ralph van der Velt, Rikkert van Bergen

Series 4 (2002) housemates
Winner: Jeanette Godefroy

Runner-up: Margriet Post

Others: Stefan, Laurens Jongema, Wouter Valkier, Judith Peereboom, Mustapha (Mushi) Essakati, Daniëla, Marc Vissers, Ting Chan, Arthur van Gijzel, Ursula Barendregt, Dennis van Solkema, Geesje de Vries, Martijn, Joyce Schoenmaekers, Bram Recourt, Sandra, Bo Koole, Carmen, Martijn Krabbé (guest)

Series 3 (2001) housemates

Winner: Sandy Boots

Runner-up: Daniëlle van der Kuij

Others: Gert-Jan de Boer, Andries de Jong, Leo van Veenendaal, Diane Hendriks, Kelly van der Veer, Ed Veter, Pascal van Lingen, Coos van Haaften, Frank Kloppert, Pricella Ahlers, Tania de Maer, Audrey, Richard Oosterhuis, Nancy van Beek, Aldrico Amando Felida, Ellen

Series 2 (2000) housemates

Winner: Bianca Hagenbeek

Runner-up: Robin Veen

Others: Koos Wentink, Georgie de Gee, Dirk Boterbloem (guest), Hieke van der Heide, Desiree Stegeman, Ferdi Bonnet, Kim Röben, Annet Stokkentreeff, Ed Nypels, Leo Piller, Miranda Huisman, Rex van Iersel, Mohammed Ali Japur (a.k.a. Darius), Jolanda Kelderman

Big Brother VIPS (1999) housemates

Winner: -

Runner-up: -

Participants: Week 1: Theo van Gogh, Christine van der Horst, Antje Monteiro, Emile Ratelband, Monique Sluyter, Johan van der Velde, Ad Visser. Week 2: John Blankenstein, Ben Cramer, Kim Holland, Des’ree Manders, Harry Slinger, Manon Thomas. Week 3: Henk Bres, Maja van den Broecke, Menno Buch, Isabelle Kuylenberg, Nicky Nicole, Mike Starink. Week 4: Maya Eksteen, Anneke Grönloh, Theodor Holman, Maxine, Henk Schiffmacher, Ronnie Tober

Series 1 (1999) housemates

Winner: Bart Spring in 't Veld

Runner-up: Ruud Benard

Others: Willem Boomsma, Karin van Elswijk, Maurice, Anouk Drost, Cyrille van Hoof, Bianca Plune, Mona Rooth-De Leeuw, Sabine Wendel, Tara van den Bergh, Martin Jonkman

Big Brother is the original Dutch version of the international reality television franchise Big Brother. It created the format in which contestants live in an isolated house trying to avoid being evicted by the public with the aim of a prize at the end. This Endemol production set the rules for other versions of Big Brother.

Origins

John de Mol

The idea was born on Thursday, 4 September 1997 during a brainstorm session at John de Mol Produkties, an independent part of Endemol. Participants were John de Mol, Patrick Scholtze, Bart Römer and his brother, Paul Römer.[1] The idea called for a luxurious house with six contestants, closed for a year. The winner would receive 1,000,000 guilders. The working title was De Gouden Kooi (The Golden Cage) and the original concept was eventually realized as a reality show on Dutch television at the end of 2006.

The group came up with the idea after the 1991 Biosphere 2 experiment in the Arizona desert, in which eight men and women discovered how hard it is to live together inside an airtight glass and steel geodesic dome that sought to replicate the Earth's environment. Big Brother alternated deprivation with excess.

The format of Big Brother was also influenced by MTV's The Real World, which began in 1992 and originated the concept of putting strangers together for an extended period and recording the drama that ensued. The Real World had introduced "confessions" by housemates. Another pioneering reality format, the Swedish TV show Expedition Robinson, (produced in many countries as Survivor) which first aired in 1997, added to the Real World 's template the idea of competition, in which contestants battled were removed from the show until only one remained.

The idea of introducing 24/7 streaming video was influenced by websites like Jennicam.org from Jennifer Ringley, a Washington resident who created it in 1997 to share her activities with Webwatchers.

In development, occupancy of the house was reduced to 100 days. An existing house was abandoned in favor of a prefabricated house. This made it possible to install "camera-cross", which allowed cameramen inside the house without being seen by the inhabitants. Originally, the idea was to produce a heavily edited weekly program, but after some experiments with the employees of the production house, the allure of slow television was discovered and the potential for a daily program was realized.

Orwell lawsuit

George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which Big Brother is the all-seeing leader of a dystopian nation, has never been acknowledged by the producers. However, the heirs of Orwell settled an agreement with Endemol and the U.S. TV network CBS after legal proceedings against the concept in the American version. The payment has never been revealed.

Voyeurdorm lawsuit

According to a lawsuit in 2000 in a New York federal district court, Big Brother was homegrown in the United States. The idea, said the suit, came out of meetings in summer 1999 between CBS executives and Voyeurdorm.com, a Tampa, Florida, adult website of eight college-age women. These women lived, ate, slept, studied and "sunbathed naked" under 55 cameras.

Castaway lawsuit

Also in 2000, the production company Castaway, part-owned by Bob Geldof, sued Endemol for theft of format in a court in Amsterdam, saying the programme was a rip-off of its Survivor-show (Expedition Robinson). A lawyer listed 12 similarities to Survivor. Endemol rejected the allegations, saying: "The genre may be the same, but the programmes are completely different and they evolved separately. There are 20 or 30 game shows on TV and many different talk shows, but they are in the same genre, not the same programme."

The logo for Big Brother was designed to fit the housestyle of Dutch television station Veronica. The wave under both names harkens back to the time that Veronica was a pirate station, broadcasting from international waters off the Netherlands. The wave remained when Veronica left the Holland Media Groep and Big Brother was taken over by Yorin. It showed up in the logos of Big Brother all over the world. However, later versions of Dutch Big Brother at Talpa abandoned the logo and are using the eye-logo introduced with the second series of Big Brother UK.

Ethics and Debate

Upon the first announcement of the program's format a debate arose about ethical acceptability. Could a program like this be decent and/or in good taste? It was not known whether participants would be shown showering or in the toilet. Though both cases had been deemed unacceptable, only the latter still holds. Experts argued whether participants should be protected against themselves and whether participation would cause psychological or emotional damage. This discussion included the moral panic in Sweden after the first contestant voted off Expedition Robinson killed himself, his family reportedly blaming the rejection he felt due to being unpopular with the public.

P. van Lange, a social psychologist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam pointed out the similarity to the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971).[2] In that experiment the participants were placed in a jail, where half played guards and the other half prisoners. In six days the experiment derailed. The guards became aggressive, repressive and sadistic. They transformed into personalities outside their normal selves. "From the Stanford-experiment may be concluded that human behavior is largely summoned by the local circumstances", added his colleague J. van der Pligt, professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam.[2] "People get carried away," said A. Bergsma of Psychologie Magazine. "Isolation becomes reality. They lose themselves in the experiment. There are no checks and balances. If there is no correction, they will derail one after another."[2] All experts agreed that the big reward for the winner increased the chance of accidents. But not all had a negative opinion. A. Lange, a professor of clinical psychology at the Universiteit van Amsterdam indicated that the program could produce certain insights not possible to achieve any more in socio-psychological research because the psychological well-being of the participant had been given greater importance.[2] "The design of the programme is the wet dream of a psychological researcher. Nowhere in the world an ethical commission will be found that would agree to such a design", agreed psycho-physiologist A. Gaillard of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research.[2]

From the moment Big Brother scored high ratings, the debate shifted to what this fact implied about the character of the Dutch, and if sexual explicitism and terms of abuse suited the early broadcasting. What was considered voyeurism now became mainstream entertainment. One explanation was that people had become more isolated and were searching for others to identify with. In this view, talking about Big Brother took the place of backbiting and scandal on the village green.

The debate in the Netherlands has died down and reality TV has become a standard of television programming. In hindsight it nonetheless became clear that some housemates (like first season's Bart en Ruud) suffered psychological problems akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. They weren't able to bear their 15 minutes of fame.

Seasons

Series Broadcaster Launch Finale Days Winner The prize Presenter
Big Brother 1999 Veronica 16 September 1999 31 December 1999 106 Bart Spring in 't Veld ƒ250,000 (€113,445) Rolf Wouters & Daphne Deckers
Big Brother 2000 14 September 2000 30 December 2000 108 Bianca Hagenbeek Esther Duller & Beau Van Erven Doren
Big Brother 2001 Yorin 6 September 2001 30 December 2001 115 Sandy Boots ƒ675,000 (€306,302) Patty Brard
Big Brother 2002 28 August 2002 23 December 2002 117 Jeanette Godefroy €352,500 Martijn Krabbé
Big Brother 2005 Talpa 24 August 2005 22 December 2005 121 Joost Hoebink €262,500 Ruud de Wild & Bridget Maasland
Big Brother 2006 20 August 2006 27 November 2006 102 Jeroen Visser €178,750 Bridget Maasland
Secret Story 2011 NET5 13 February 2011 12 May 2011 89 Sharon Hooijkaas €117,050 Renate Verbaan

See also

References

  1. ↑ Karel Hille et al. Big Brother. Hét boek. BZZZTôh / De Telegraaf, 's-Gravenhage / Amsterdam. 2000
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Tom-Jan Meeus. Riskante afvalrace op televisie. NRC, 24 September 1999
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