re: Big Brother: Over the Top Season Thread

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Although it still has Big Brother's brand and the power shifts of the head of household, veto and all of that, we feel like it's being re-imagined for this digital audience. It is more of a Big Brother adjacent. It's not the same thing as the summer show. We're not turning around three hours of television for broadcast every week. But there's different ways for people to get involved and to watch. This is a live event. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The edited portions will be more recaps on a daily basis and a weekly show that will be familiar to people who have seen the broadcast version. But this is really about a live event. We felt that it was different and really added to what Big Brother is. We like to think we're technologically forward and groundbreaking in many ways and take advantage of new technology.

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We also are careful. There's a lot of things that are staples in the broadcast show that are only going to be in the broadcast shows. Like OTEV, Zingbot and a lot of the stuff that people love from the broadcast show -- all of those are staying in the broadcast world. They are not going to overlap into the digital world. The digital [edition] is going to be a new style, types of challenges, taking into account that everything has to be live and you can watch the challenges play out live. It's going to be a totally different experience for the challenges as well. But a lot of those things that are somewhat sacred to the broadcast are going to stay in the broadcast.

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We wanted to make something that was more interactive this fall. The jury is a staple for the summer show and we thought that this would be an interesting experiment that obviously hasn't been tried here in the U.S. since the beginning. But it also has other elements. There's a nice balance between the houseguests having control in terms of nominations and evictions and other things within the house so for the audience to have control over the winner was something we were comfortable adding. There are things that haven't been announced yet and will be revealed the first week where the audience will still get involved and be able to impact the game like never before. So they will have a hand in some of these things, but not complete control over any one thing.

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We feel like people really enjoy watching the feeds and a lot of it has to do with the dynamic of head of household and veto and the game elements that we added so that there's this constant strategy happening. We wanted to make sure that those elements stayed the same so that at least that part of what makes the feeds interesting will still be alive. We're not completely changing the Big Brother game.

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With the cast, some super fans were confused about whether or not sisters Alex and Morgan will be playing as one houseguest or two. Can you clarify that?

Grodner: They will be playing as two houseguests. They're going into the house together. The question is how will they choose to play that. Will they be upfront about being sisters? Will they try to hide that? We've had twists like this in the past where there's been exes in the house and it's interesting to see how they play it. This is a casting twist where it will be interesting to see how they manage this. They do obviously look a lot a like, but they are very, very different personality wise. They're really complete opposites.

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How were you able to switch up the house in such a short amount of time? Can you tease what the house will look like?

Meehan: It's a smaller transformation than normal. We took our summer house and modified it as quickly as we possibly could in three or four days. It will have a slightly different look. A couple of the rooms will be the same with maybe some subtle changes. The "Have Not" room will change a bit. It was a challenge to get in there and do as much as we possibly could with only three or four days knowing that normally when we turn the house around, what do we have, Allison, eight weeks or something?

Grodner: Yeah.

Meehan: This one we only had four days. I think it's a pretty significant change for just a few days.

Grodner: But there will be elements of the prior house.

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For Wednesday night's premiere, is it a produced first episode or are we seeing everything live?

Grodner: No! This all will roll out live! They'll be moving on Wednesday night live! This will be how the show will be. You will see it all!

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So you don't even know what to expect for the premiere?

Grodner: No idea! There's a schedule that's out there for the viewers to understand when there are moments, votes and competitions. We will go by that schedule. This is all so that the action is constant. For the first time ever, we're going to have curfews for people to be awake! Waking hours! Instead of logging on to see a lot of people sleeping like in the summer. The live feed is the primary focus. The recaps are just part of how you can watch and get involved, but it's not the primary method of delivering the show.

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How will the live diary room sessions work? Will fans hear the overhead voice speaking to the houseguest in the diary room?

Grodner: They will follow a guideline. This is the first time we're doing this. We're going to live stream, but it's their opportunity to go in there and talk directly to the viewers. [They will be] answering questions that will be given to them in some form. We're still figuring that out.

Meehan: There will be a list of questions that they all have. They'll read the question and answer it. The thing we wanted to make sure is that if you're watching the feeds, there's still opportunities for you to get inside people's heads to know what they're actually thinking, who they're really being loyal to, who they're playing. We want to give the houseguests the opportunity to tell viewers what's actually going on. With only one full hour a week of an episode, we wanted to provide other opportunities to get inside the heads of the players. They say the question out loud and then they go ahead and talk about it straight to the viewer.

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