Big Brother 2 Updates: Scheduling and What Houseguests Have Been Told
by David Bloomberg
-- 07/10/2002
CBS has again altered the schedule for showing the pre-empted Big Brother 2 shows in the wake of the attacks and aftermath. Also, they have added to what they told the houseguests.
There have been several changes in the Big Brother 2 situation – both in scheduling and in what they have told the players.
The original plan was to schedule one of the pre-empted episodes for Saturday night and one for Tuesday night. However, CBS has decided to push back the Saturday night episode again. Now both episodes are scheduled to air on Tuesday night, one after the other.
In the house itself, the producers have told the contestants more – including about the Pentagon, the fourth plane that went down in Pennsylvania, etc. They have told Monica more about her missing cousin (which is, frankly, that she’s still missing). All three have discussed how huge this must be, so they are finally beginning to understand the enormity of it all. Still, without the pictures and videos and 24-hour coverage we have all seen, it cannot quite be hitting home in the same way.
The producers have still held to their rules and not allowed phone calls or other direct communication between the houseguests and their families, but they have apparently allowed messages to be passed back and forth with the producers as intermediaries.
On an interesting side note, it appears that the Big Brother shows in production in several other countries have not even told their players about the attacks. Then again, the attacks were not aimed at their country, and it is much less likely that they are directly affected in the same way that, say, Monica is.
Despite calls for the show to cancel its ending and just let the houseguests go home, CBS has apparently decided to go on with the show. While the contestants did sign up to be kept totally cloistered and away from the outside world, certainly nobody thought of this type of extreme circumstance at the time, and it is heartening to see that the producers have provided additional information to them. While only a couple weeks ago, we were pointing out that Big Brother had violated its own rules by allowing contact between Nicole and her husband, this is obviously a much different situation.
Still, the houseguests should be given some sort of preparation on the enormity of this situation before they leave the house. It will seem very strange on Thursday to see one of them celebrating their win of half a million dollars while the rest of the country continues to mourn.
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