Big Brother (Dutch TV series)

Dutch television series

Big Brother is the Dutch version of the international reality television franchise Big Brother. It created a reality TV show format where contestants live in an isolated house, and try to avoid being evicted by viewers to win a prize at the end. The original Dutch version of the show was initially aired from 1999 to 2006 for six regular seasons, and two celebrity editions. Many international versions have also been developed following the same structure. In 2021, the cooperation season with Flanders of Big Brother returned in the Netherlands after an absence of 14 years.

Participants were John de Mol, Patrick Scholtze, Bart Römer and his brother, Paul Römer. 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 format of Big Brother was also influenced by MTV's The Real World, which began in 1992 and created 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, which first aired in 1997 (and was produced in many other countries as was Survivor) added to the Real Worlds template the idea of competition, in which contestants battled to remain in the series, fighting and defeating each other (in the context of the show, not physically) 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.

Among the series' initial directors was the future filmmaker Tom Six, who would become renowned for his body horror film The Human Centipede and its sequels.

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 settlement for the lawsuit has never been publicly revealed.

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 aged women. These women lived, ate, slept, studied and "sunbathed naked" under 55 cameras.

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 program 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 of 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.

Upon the announcement of the program's format, a debate arose about its ethical acceptability. It was not known whether participants would be shown showering or on the toilet. Though both 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). Participants in that experiment were placed in a jail, where half of them played guards and the other half prisoners. In six days, the experiment derailed. The guards became aggressive, repressive, narcissistic, and sadistic. They transformed into personalities beyond 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. "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." 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. "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. Once Big Brother first started scoring high ratings, the debate shifted to what this implied about the character of the Dutch, and if the sexually explicit content and terms of abuse in the program suited early broadcasting. What was considered voyeurism had 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.

SeasonOriginally airedDaysHousematesWinnerThe prizePresenter Network First aired Last aired Big Brother 1999Veronica 16 September 1999 31 December 1999 106 12 Bart Spring in 't Veld ƒ250,000(€113,445) Rolf Wouters & Daphne Deckers Big Brother 2000 14 September 2000 30 December 2000 108 15 Bianca Hagenbeek Esther Duller & Beau Van Erven Doren Big Brother 2001Yorin 6 September 2001 30 December 2001 115 17 Sandy Boots ƒ675,000(€306,302) Patty Brard Big Brother 2002 28 August 2002 23 December 2002 117 20 Jeanette Godefroy €352,500 Martijn Krabbé Big Brother 2005Talpa 24 August 2005 22 December 2005 121 13 Joost Hoebink €262,500 Ruud de Wild & Bridget Maasland Big Brother 2006 20 August 2006 27 November 2006 102 15 Jeroen Visser €178,750 Bridget Maasland Big Brother 2021RTL 5 4 January 2021 8 April 2021 99 19 Jill Goede €70,405.50Geraldine Kemper & Peter van de Veire Big Brother 2022 3 January 2022 26 March 20228616 Salar Abassi Abrassi €69,815 Big Brother 2023 9 January 2023 1 April 2023 Bart Vandenbroek €73,388 Geraldine Kemper & Tatyana Beloy Big Brother 2024 15 January 2024 13 April 2024 93 18 Glenn Van Himst €56,266