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Jade Goody - Source: Reuters -
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Big Brother, the show which made Jade Goody a household name in Britain has been cancelled.
Channel 4 said it is to ditch the once-popular reality
television series amid falling ratings for this year's show.
Launched in Britain in 2000, the show in which contestants live
together in an enclosed space and face a series of public eviction
votes made celebrities out of Jade Goody and "Nasty" Nick
Bateman.
Kevin Lygo, director of television and content at Channel 4, said
next year's series of Celebrity Big Brother and Big Brother would
be the last on the network.
"Big Brother is still profitable for Channel 4 despite its reduced
popularity and there could have been the option to renew it on more
favourable terms," he said in a statement.
"That's what a purely commercial broadcaster would have done, but
Channel 4 has a public remit to champion new forms of
creativity.
"The programme (Big Brother) has reached a natural end point on
Channel 4 and it's time to move on."
UK media reports say that around two million people have been
tuning in to the latest Big Brother series, the 10th - a fraction
of its peak audience of 10 million.
As well as making household names of a handful of contestants, the
show produced a major controversy in 2007 when Goody was accused of
racism after bullying Indian housemate Shilpa Shetty, prompting
tens of thousands of complaints.
Goody was evicted in a public vote and Bollywood actress Shetty
went on to win the series.
Goody then faced a very public battle with cancer and
died earlier this year.
Channel 4's Lygo said dropping Big Brother would not solve the
company's funding shortfalls, adding that the channel had nearly
125 million pounds ($204 million) less to spend in 2009 than two
years ago. Next year may be even worse, he added.
"However ... the significant sums that have been committed to Big
Brother in the past should now be available to boost budgets in
genres such as drama that have had to be cut back sharply during
the downturn."
In its statement, Channel 4 said original drama spending would be
boosted by 20 million pounds from 2011.
It announced a four-part series called We Were Faces directed by
Shane Meadows and a four-part adaptation of William Boyd's
best-selling novel Any Human Heart.
