Big Brother Hotshots: The wait continues
Enter5

Butterphly

Jonathan Mbiriyamveka
Greetings to all and I hope I find you in good shape. It feels good to be back after a long break. Yours truly was a bit under the weather, you know it comes with the change of seasons.It seems that September is fated to be an internationally dramatic month.

Many years ago it was the 9 /11 and now it has all been about TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations collapse in which dozens of worshippers perished.

Of course the famed prophet blamed the collapse of the church building on Boko Haram.

Of local interest was one Zimbabwean killed and the sensationalising of what appears to have been the narrow escape of Mutashu, the man who dramatically withdrew his adultery case against Walter Magaya, a self-acclaimed protege of TB Joshua.

Mutashu was seen at SCOAN on live TV a few days before the collapse and he must be thanking his lucky stars for timing his visit’s end before the disaster.

We were also shocked to hear of the news that Christ Embassy’s flamboyant preacher Chris Oyakhilome’s wife Anita had filed for divorce over alleged adultery.

And of course one cannot speak of this month without touching on how the “No Vote” in Scotland was an anticlimax after the expectations raised that the country would choose to split from the UK.

And one cannot help wondering what would happen if the same plebiscite were to be held in Ireland. But maybe that is too gory a scene to imagine as it is unlikely that in that country the outcome will be accepted peacefully by all as has happened in Scotland.

You certainly cannot deny that TV is seriously engaging.

But from the entertainment angle the bad news was that the Big Brother house in South Africa had been gutted by fire and that the cause of the fire was unknown.

While there was no loss of life, the incident has made life difficult for the producers – Endemol SA since they had to look for another studio.

And worst still, they had already flown house-mates from their countries to South Africa just in time for the launch.

More often than not, The Big Brother reality show is about suspense and twists but after seeing that the producers were taken by surprise themselves, they had to change their game plan and one of them was to release the names of the housemates before the actual launch on October 5.

Already that has caused its problems since up to date, they have only released names of three Big Brother Hotshots house-mates

Butterphly from Zimbabwe, Alusa From Kenya and Ellah from Uganda.

Initially, M-Net and series producers Endemol SA were supposed to unveil on a daily basis the names of the participating housemates live on the official Big Brother website which launched September 17.

But until yesterday only three names had been announced and fans were asking what was going on.

The producers or M-Net owe fans an explanation because what could be the reason for going for days without announcing the rest of the names? If it was part of the suspense then they should have made that clear.

For Zimbabwe the second house-mate was an anticlimax as people immediately took to social media to show that they have serious doubts that the country will be well-represented.

Quite honestly, the show should have been postponed to next year, seeing that the fire had disrupted the smooth flow of the programme.

And it would be shocking that what usually takes months to put together can be rearranged and made perfect in just weeks.

No matter how good Endemol SA is, there is no guarantee that the new set up Big Brother Hotshots house will be as good as the first one.

We understand that they want to capitalise on the fact that the Big Brother phenomena is still popular in Africa even if it has fallen off in other continents but when things don’t work out it is best to postpone and wait for the right time.

The show runs for three months and what this means is that it will run into the festive season, a time when there is so much in the offing.

Will audiences stay glued or is this the beginning of the end for the reality show?

Will the producers get the viewership that they were looking at or the numbers will drop significantly?

During the eighth season of Big Brother, over six million fans interacted with the show via the Website, Twitter, and Facebook, with the website generating just over 200 million impressions.

It appears the excitement is no longer there and the producers must fulfil their promise. But we will give them the benefit of the doubt and hope for the best.

Until next week remember this is television and it is real.

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