The eighth season of the Australian reality television series, Big Brother, also known as Big Brother 2008, began on 28 April 2008 and was the final season to air on Network Ten during its original run on the network. A total 20 housemates competed in the show. Halfway through the show, the prize money was revealed to be $250,000, the amount originally given in the earlier season of the show.
This season introduced Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O as the new hosts, replacing Gretel Killeen, who had previously hosted the show since its launch. It also featured the return of an adult-themed weekly installment titled Big Mouth. The season featured a new voice for Big Brother, provided by Leon Murray. Compared to Nick Colquhoun's stricter and more authoritarian tone in the 2005–2007 seasons, Murray adopted a more lenient and approachable style. Murray later returned to provide the voice of Big Brother when the series moved to Network 10 for the 2012–2014 seasons, maintaining a similarly more relaxed and less punitive approach.
Production
Auditions Auditions opened in late 2007. People wishing to audition were required to post a video audition of themselves on the official Big Brother website. Voting closed on 7 January 2008. The three people with the highest number of votes would be guaranteed a place in the House with the top 50 others to go through a second selection process.
This season featured a new audition process similar to the format used in the earlier seasons, where people wishing to audition sent in a tape rather than attending cattle call audition sessions. For the first time in Big Brother Australia history, the public could vote which housemates they wanted to see in the House before the start of the show.
Promotions Promotional advertisements for the new season premiered on 6 April 2008 featuring a short video of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard criticising the show in 2006, stating that Channel Ten should "get this stupid show off the air", followed by the tagline "I Don't Think So" from the eponymous Kelis track.
The show This season began Monday 28 April 2008 at 7:00 pm. The opening episode had the lowest-ever ratings of any launch of Big Brother Australia. The episode mostly outrated its competitors in most timeslots—except its second half-hour when it lost out to Border Security. The audience for the launch peaked at 1.91 million.
This season lasted a total of 84 days. The 2008 finale aired on Monday 21 July 2008 at 7:00 pm on Network Ten. It was the first Big Brother Australia finale to feature three finalists and the first hosted by Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O.
Season changes Starting this season, new hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O replaced Gretel Killeen, who had hosted since the show's launch in 2001. Sandilands notably previously appeared as a Housemate on Celebrity Big Brother and was a house guest on Big Brother 2007. The nomination and eviction processes were changed for this season and those elements were both covered in the same weekly episode of the program. In previous seasons nominations and evictions were conducted separately and each had a weekly special dedicated to them. Big Brother: UpLate did not air this season due to Ten's late night programming schedule being used for Indian Premier League cricket telecasts in May and June. In comparison to 2007's broadcast, this season saw 11 hours less free-to-air telecasts a week, solely due to the absence of Mike Goldman's Big Brother: UpLate.
Television broadcast episodes featured a slightly updated logo and graphics, and much shorter theme music intros to each show. The free internet streaming was also changed. The time allotted to free streaming was cut to three five-minute blocks per-day. The full-membership subscriptions cost around A$33.00.
Big Mouth A new panel discussion program titled Big Brother's Big Mouth was hosted by Tony Squires and Rebecca Wilson. This show was similar in format to the UK Big Brother panel show of the same name. It screened Monday nights, initially at 9:30 pm before being moved later due to low ratings. The program included material previously featured in Big Brother: Uncut. It featured former housemates and guests, including Tim Brunero (2005) and Paul Dyer (2004). With its MA15+ classification, the show used previously unseen footage from the house where editorially justified and served as a platform for discussion of adult content. The program was described as providing “exclusive scenes, access-all-areas coverage, and discussion of housemates’ actions, both positive and negative,” with no topic considered too sensitive for the panel.
The House The House was rebuilt with a new layout as has occurred with most seasons of Big Brother Australia. The bedroom contained just one big bed for all housemates to share. The garden featured a Volkswagen Type 2 in which one housemate had to sleep. There was also a vending machine in the garden. The housemates could buy various items such as snacks, and sunglasses. Coins for the vending machine were distributed to housemates as a reward for sustaining good behaviour.
Nomination and eviction voting format In the previous season of Big Brother, housemates nominated two other housemates for eviction and viewers then voted to actually evict. In this season the nominations were based on viewer votes collected through the week. The public were only able to vote for which housemate to save from eviction. The three housemates with the fewest save votes were nominated for eviction on Sunday. The housemates then voted to evict one of these three. Housemates gave two points to one person they want evicted, and one point to another of the three.
The winner of Friday Night Games had the power to remove one nominated housemate from the nomination lineup, after which the housemate(s) in fourth place moved into the nomination lineup. In awarding eviction points, the winner could award four points to one person, and two points to another.
After five weeks, the nomination and eviction process reverted to the traditional format of all previous seasons: the housemates nominate, and viewers vote for the housemate to be evicted. Unlike the preceding few seasons, there was no save vote for nominated housemates; viewers could only vote to evict.
At the start of this season, Big Brother announced to the housemates that "snap evictions" will be executed at various points during the show. Terri was evicted on the first night in what was described as a "snap eviction", but she was soon returned to the house. Two of the three viewer-voted housemates, Barney and Michael, were quickly removed in what was described by the show's makers as a "snap eviction". In the final week, housemates were asked to vote to evict two housemates in a surprise "snap eviction". Alice and Travis were "evicted" and moved to another section of the compound. Later, it was revealed to Alice and Travis, and then the other housemates, that this eviction was fake and Alice and Travis returned to the main House.
Housemates It was initially confirmed that there would be 18 housemates this season. A young Afghan Muslim housemate withdrew from the show before it began. Big Brother executive producer Virginia Hodgson stated that he was originally selected as a housemate but was unable to participate due to personal and family reasons. Ultimately, 14 housemates entered the house on the opening night – three housemates voted on during the audition process entered during the first week, while three intruders entered during the sixth week.
NameAge Day entered Day exited Result Terri Munro52 0 7 1 85 Rory Ammon21 0 85 Ben McCallum19 0 852nd Runner-up Alice Redwood25 0 84 Travis Keyser20 0 84 Edward Cherry22 35 77 Brigitte Stavaruk20 0 73 Bianca Benigno18 0 70 Terrence Hardie51 35 63 Nobbi Tanaka21 0 56 Rhianna Baxter25 35 49 Renee Black22 0 42 Dixie Crawford21 0 35 David Tchappat32 0 28 Nathan Strempel27 7 28 Rebecca Morgan22 0 21 Saxon Pepper22 0 14 Barney Barnett32 7 10 Michael Crafter26 7 10 Rima Hadchiti25 0 5
House guests There were several celebrity guests appearances featured during this season. Carson Kressley arrived and gave the housemates a makeover to promote his new show, How to Look Good Naked. He stayed for only several hours. Former housemate Rima returned briefly late in the show. Rima was originally a housemate, but left after breaking her leg on the first Friday Night Live games. She returned on Day 63 with a special task of telling the housemates that there was a mole among them. She left on Day 66 after a four-day return.
Pamela Anderson entered as a guest on Day 73, then returned the following day for a special task. She did not stay in the house overnight. When asked how much she was paid to do the show, she said, "Much more than I am worth" and "I don't want to say how much but it is a lot." The day after her first Big Brother appearance, Anderson took part in a campaign against alleged KFC cruelty outside Southport KFC Restaurant, Gold Coast, where she hand-delivered a letter to the manager opposing expressing her concerns. Anderson's appearance generated the highest ratings of the entire season to that time.
Friday Night Live themes and winners Week Theme Winner Runner up 1 Out of This World Nobbi Brigitte 2 Hip-Hop Nathan Travis 3 Celebrities Rebecca Nathan 4 Scouts Alice Terri 5 A Day at the Races Renee Nobbi 6 Superheroes Nobbi Bianca 7 Friday the 13th Nobbi Travis 8 Heavy Metal Brigitte Travis 9 Spy Night Cherry Brigitte 10 I Love New York Cherry Bianca 11 Circus Night Ben Travis 12 Playing to Win Rory Travis
Reception After the telecast of the season's third eviction show, critic Andrew Mercado summarised the 2008 season eviction shows, which he described as in previous seasons being a viewing highlight of the season, as having descended into "just a boring, hateful shemozzle, where Kyle insults everybody around him (housemates are psychos, the crew are work experience and the audience is a 'pack of pigs')." The 2008 season showed a marked downturn in ratings for the program. Another commentator, Peter Craven, described the 2008 season as being increasingly gimmicky. The visit by Carson Kressley to make over the housemates was seen as an obvious gimmick; when Kressley made a second appearance in another makeover episode screened several days later, Craven felt that it looked forced.
Both the Daily Show and the eviction shows rated significantly lower than previous seasons. Ratings for the first 2008 eviction were half those achieved by eviction shows during the program's peak. Academic Alan McKee singled-out the departure of previous host Gretel Killeen as having weakened the season. McKee judged that Killeen had successfully provided the show's "moral centre". Of the replacement hosts, McKee said that "Kyle and Jackie O just don't serve the same purpose. Jackie is quite limp and Kyle prides himself on just being wrong—he will always say the wrong, obnoxious thing and hurt people." By the eviction show on 1 June 2008, the program's ratings were said to have "almost flatlined on Sunday night, dropping below 500,000 in the key demographic along the East Coast."