Abstract

With Big Brother (BB) finally evicted from C4’s schedules, it is timely to not only reflect on how BB has re-written the ways in which celebrity can be created, but also to consider the significance of interactivity and BB‘s cross-platform nature to the conceptualisation of a media phenomenon. BB’s consumption habits stretched across the multiple screens of digital media technology, and in many ways BB could be said to be as much cross-platform, as television. Through its interactivity, and immersivity, it has called in to question reality TV itself, and permanently challenged once fixed celebrity/public binaries. With an audience that was freed to ‘over-ride’ (or at least subvert) once incontestable editorial calls, BB’s cross-platform offerings allowed viewers to claim an active role in the (co-)creation of celebrity. BB has significantly altered reality formats, and audience’s expectations of them, but arguably, it is in the dissolving of the barrier between audience and celebrity, that may lay its most significant epitaph. Keywords: Big Brother; celebrity; cross-platform; reality TV; interactivity.