Is Big Brother getting greedy? Eager watchers of the popular TV reality show have been left wondering after Big Brother announced on day 49 of the life reality show that two ex-housemates will be coming back to the Big Brother House. The issue is that Nigerians had initially voted these housemates out of the house before.
So this is how Big Brother Naija works. They bring in a group of young people to live together in the big brother house for 90 days. But all housemates do not get to live in the house for 90 days because every week, housemates nominate another for eviction then the housemates with the highest nominations are put up for eviction.
Avid watchers of the show in the country are then asked to vote to save their favorite housemate. The housemates with the highest votes get to stay but the housemate(s) with the least votes gets evicted from the big brother house.
Big Brother Naija 2018 is already in third season. This year’s reality show is themed ‘Double Wahala.’ Since it was launched on 28 January, 2018 there has been four eviction shows. Bitto, Princess, Dee-One and Vandora were evicted with Khloe and K-Brule disqualified during the first eviction. Angel and Ahneeka were evicted at the second eviction. Ifu Ennada and Leo were evicted at the third eviction, and then Anto was evicted at the fourth eviction.
Evictions do not come for free. Each vote to save a favourite house mate costs as much as N30 per vote. For effect and to maximize profit, Big Brother is perhaps one of the few competitions where voting more than once for a favourite candidate is not a ‘crime.’ So, if you are so desperate to save your favourite housemate, you can actually vote for him as many times as you want. While this increases your chance of keeping your favourite house mate in the house, it also means the organisers make money from your multiple votes. Before now, once an evictee leaves the house, that was the end. But now Big Brother is introducing a new twist.
Avid watchers of the show are now being asked to vote to bring back their favorite former housemates to the house. The ex-housemates with the highest scores will be brought back to the house. So instead of just voting for eviction, big brother has added voting to recall evicted housemates. This recalled house mates may also be put for eviction sometime before the end of the show again and their fans will have to vote to save them. What this means is that these two housemates will be vote for thrice. They were first voted out of the house, voted back in and may be voted out again.
So let us say, the first time they were voted, a candidate received a conservative 10,000 votes. At N30 per vote, that is N300,000 for big brother. Now let us say that housemate gets another 10,000 votes to bring him back to the house. That is another N300,000 for Big Brother. If that same house mate gets another 10,000 votes to be evicted from the house, that is another N300,000. So for returning a candidate to the house, Big Brother is tripling the potential revenue that can be made on a single candidate. Good business for Big Bother but people are not certain if it is such a good business for fans of the popular show.
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But there is also not denying the fact that returning the housemates to the house adds drama and entertainment to the show. Which is what makes it popular in the first place. So it could also be that fans are just paying for the cost of Big Brother adding a little bit of more drama and excitement to their TV screens and homes.
Roseline Amadi
