Big Brother's Little Bucks

Eye-eye! What's Goin' On 'Ere?

Following the controversy of a ballsed up phone vote during January's Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 4 have today announced that they will not be profiting from this year's Big Brother phone votes.

It has halved the cost of calling to vote for the upcoming series 8, starting on Wednesday 30th May to just 25p per call. 15p of this will be spent on administration. The rest goes to charities.

The Celebrity Big Brother phone cock up occurred when a voice over announced a number to call if viewers wanted to "evict" Shilpa Shetty. At the same time, the on screen graphic illustrated that viewers must call the same number to "save" her. This mix up caused Channel 4 to scrap that evening's votes.

Channel 4 said they wished to keep the voting process, "fair and transparent". So, in addition to the aforementioned measures the channel has decided to scrap the ability to vote via text message. This is apparently due to the lack of time during a live broadcast for mobile phone operators to count and verify text votes.

Personally, I gave up watching Big Brother after last year's snooze fest. I reckon I've out grown it, but I've said that before and become addicted again! *sigh*