Big Brother apology rings hollow

The Ten Network has apologised for part of its Big Brother program – the part where a male inmate rubbed himself up against a female inmate in a lewd way (see the SMH report here).

The
apology came late yesterday afternoon in Ten’s second statement of the
week, which went further than the previous one by asserting that
“Network Ten takes viewer concerns and its responsibilities under the
Television Industry Code of Practice (The Code) very seriously.”

Ten
says it will “encourage” the producer, Southern Star Endermol to “again
reinforce these warnings to the housemates,” especially in respect to
behaviour towards women, and the producers will be encouraged to raise
awareness of these and other responsibilities among the housemates.

But
isn’t it all a bit late, considering the deliberate strategy by Ten and
Southern Star Endermol? After all, according to a story in The Age in May, the Big Brother
press kit distributed by Ten before the start of this year’s series
contained six condoms, an erotic game and a bottle of vodka – and that
“the Big Brother camp are hoping for at least a little raunch.”

Last night’s TV ratings

The Winners Today Tonight on Seven for its national win – but not in Sydney where it lost for the second time this week to A Current Affair, Temptation on Nine for finishing second nationally, Seven News for topping Nine News and Beyond Tomorrow.
The Losers The last of the Queen’s Castle (hopefully) with Brian Henderson on
Nine. Sank under the million mark as republican sentiments awoke
among viewers. Nine didn’t show the Castle in Melbourne so it’s
national audience was down. Nine put on a local tourist show, Postcards,
to air in the same timeslot and picked up 466,000 people. Talk about
Network loyalty! Big Brother: 1.075 million viewers, not particularly great,
even though it dominated the 16 to 39 age group for Ten. But Home and Away beat it easily in total people.
News & CA Seven News won nationally and in Sydney where the gap was only down to 7,000 or so people. ACA won in Sydney and Melbourne but lost elsewhere, especially in Adelaide and Perth where the margins in favour of TT were large. Perth in particular remains the big difference for Seven News and Today Tonight:
its holding the national audiences up despite the gains Nine is making
in Sydney at 6pm and 6:30pm. Not helping Seven is that the main Sydney
reader, Ian Ross, is on ten days’ holiday and the young but quite
competent Sam Armytage is standing in.
The Stats Another closeish night with a Nine win on 29.6%, followed by Seven
with 27.0% and Ten with 25.5%. The ABC was on 14.4%, not bad with The New Inventors, Spicks and Specks, Black Books and The Glasshouse, all doing reasonably well on a competitive night. SBS was in its usual spot with a lowish 3.5%.
Glenn Dyer’s comments Ten’s US version of The Office, debut at 7:30pm with back-to-back episodes and it did OK, averaging 869,000 and doing well for Ten
in the 16 to 39 group.The creator of the original UK version, Ricky
Gervais, is heavily involved in the writing of the US knock-off, so
there’s still the same sort of maddening, you want to choke him
reaction.