March 28, 2005
'Now Holland had to decide which of the two housemates would be evicted, splitting Dutch television's Romeo and Juliet'
Concluding:
extracts from Billion Dollar Game track the rise of Big Brother Peter Bazalgette tells how the concept, initially received with scepticism, finally won over audiences and became a television phenomenon
THERE are three crucial factors in the production of Big Brother: casting, casting and casting. While buyers queued up to buy the format in Cannes and lawyers’ letters clogged up Endemol’s fax machines, in Holland the very first Big Brother housemates were getting to know each other.
Paul Romer and Hummie van der Tonnekreek, the producers, had taken care to recruit several young, single participants. Among them were Bart Spring in ’t Veld, blond, muscular and newly discharged from the army. So was the hairdresser Sabine Wendel, an attractive “girl next door”. There was also Martin Jonkman, an air-conditioning salesman also in his early twenties.
From the second week it became clear that both Martin and Bart were interested in Sabine. Bart was happy to take his time, but Martin went in for the kill. He led Sabine into the garden where he felt insulated from the cameras. In a whisper that he imagined the personal microphones would not pick up he told her a “secret”.
Sabine recalls it now with a smile: “He said, I have to tell you something. I think Bart is gay because he touched my feet.” The housemates soon became irritated by Martin’s puppy love and nominated him for eviction at the first opportunity. Now matters were in the hands of the viewers, who had seen Martin’s perfidy. Martin had been exposed as Big Brother’s first villain and was voted out. This was real-life soap, where the viewer could participate in the unfolding drama. And the audience’s compulsion to vote was developing a valuable new revenue stream — Endemol shared part of the revenue from each call.
With Martin out of the house, the field was clear for Bart: “After two weeks we discovered each other. We figured you need someone you can do things with.” Sabine was agreeable: “At first we were friendly. It grew to something like love. You have no idea what’s going on outside. We said to ourselves — we think nobody’s watching this.”
Bart and Sabine’s romance became a front-page story in the popular newspapers. The ratings, after three weeks, began to rise. In the two key age groups — 13 to 19 and 20 to 34 — Veronica (the television channel) was often getting shares of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent. These were extraordinary figures, matched by an unprecedented seven million hits on the Big Brother website. Advertisers, seeing the growing interest, started to book slots. And from this point, Endemol finally knew that they not only had a hit on their hands, but also a profitable one.
(John) De Mol’s (the Big Brother creator) intuition and capacity to take huge risks had once again paid off: “When the romance between Bart and Sabine happened it really exploded. All of a sudden you saw interviews with people who said this is brilliant. Professors were on TV praising it. The most critical newspapers changed their tune. As with Elvis Presley in the 1950s, we were moving from being the devil himself to being establishment.”
De Telegraaf, which had greedily followed the Big Brother controversy, devoted eight breathless pages of its Saturday colour magazine to the phenomenon. Soon afterwards Holland’s Minister for Culture declared that Big Brother was the best thing that had happened to Dutch TV in decades.
Once a relationship develops in the Big Brother house there is a narrative. Viewers turn the programme on day after day to find out what will happen next. In Holland everyone was waiting for Bart’s and Sabine’s first kiss. But the other housemates began to resent the intimacy of these two lovers.
After five weeks they took their revenge, inadvertently setting up an extraordinary denouement. They each went into the isolated “diary room” to make their confidential nominations for eviction. One by one they voted for Bart and Sabine. Now Holland had to decide which of the two would be evicted, splitting Dutch television’s Romeo and Juliet.
Bart or Sabine? All week Dutch viewers voted, on an unprecedented scale. More than a million phone calls were made. The choice they had to make was described, in retrospect, by Sabine with absolute frankness: “People had to choose between a nice boy and a bitchy girl. It’s not a difficult choice.”
As the week progressed Bart and Sabine had no idea how the vote was going. On their final night together the other housemates, as much out of guilt as sympathy, offered them the chance to be alone. The house had two bedrooms. They transferred mattresses from one to the other and congregated there.
Late in the evening they were kissing on the sofa in the main room. Bart suggested they go to bed. Sabine hesitated. They seemed to be making their way to separate bedrooms. They embraced again. She then succumbed and followed Bart to the empty bedroom. They took off their clothes in the dark. The images were picked up clearly by Big Brother’s infrared cameras: two very attractive twentysomethings, each with good bodies. They climbed into bed. More than three million people were watching — one in five of the population.
Dutch newspapers had been simultaneously condemning and encouraging the prospect of sex in the Big Brother house. Privately, they were now disappointed by how real the scene was. Bart and Sabine never revealed what actually happened. But the production team were in little doubt. Most people were swept along by the story and charmed by the tenderness between the couple. “People were more worked up about the condition of the chickens in the garden!” said the director.
The next day the housemates gathered to hear the result of the vote. Bart and Sabine sat together holding hands. The Big Brother presenter greeted them over the public address system. “The next person to leave the Big Brother house is . . .
Sabine.”
Full Article :
Yimesonline
