Big Brother: Julie Chen wants jury house live feeds
- TV Show
Two people will be voted out of Big Brother tonight in a special double-elimination episode, and those two people will immediately be sent to the jury house where they will be sequestered until the finale to vote for the winner. Each week, we will see a little snippet of life in the jury house on the CBS broadcast, but what if we could see more? So much more.
That was on the mind of one Big Brother fan who tweeted me a question to ask Big Brother host Julie Chen when I spoke to her on EW Morning Live (Entertainment Weekly Radio, SiriusXM, channel 105).
So I asked it! Turns out not only is Chen on board for live streaming activity in the Big Brother jury house, she has actually been pitching it for close to a decade!
"Cathy is speaking my language," says Chen. "I have been pushing for this for like eight years at least. Because the jury house is where you don't have to say anything nice to anyone anymore. You've already lost the money. And there has been so much drama. And, as a matter of fact, I brought it up yesterday. I said if the second person evicted tonight is Paul, we're moving all our cameras to the jury house. Can you imagine Paul and Cody for a week alone?! And if Paul walks out of the house tonight, there goes half our content!"
Of course, as Chen points out, there are logistical reasons why jury live feeds do not exist. "The reason we don't do it is I think a combination of A: It's probably very costly. B: Where are you going to put the space? Even if it's interesting to watch, it doesn't serve the show because it has nothing to do with what's happening on the show ultimately. Week by week there's so much content in the Big Brother house."
However, with CBS having launched CBS All Access, Big Brother jury house live feeds could be a great addition to the pay streaming site and incentivize even more people to sign up for the service. And Chen thinks it could be done. "If we could build an inexpensive little house that could handle it — ‘cause I don't see Big Brother ever going off the air; this thing just has a life of its own and keeps going — it would be interesting to watch. I'm going to pitch it again. Thank you, Cathy! I'm going to pitch it one more time." <iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/338289666&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false" class="" allowfullscreen="" resize="0" replace_attributes="1" name=""></iframe>
To hear our entire interview with Chen — as well as our chats with Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and The Defenders' Charlie Cox — you can listen to the EW Morning Live podcast above. Or subscribe on iTunes to listen on the go. And for more EW Morning Live podcast news, follow us on Twitter @EWMLPodcast.