Big Brother Canada 11 Digital Dailies have come to an end. When it was announced that the Big Brother Canada 11 Live Feeds would be replaced by the Digital Dailies, I had a lot of feelings, and most of them were annoyance and anger. It would make BBCAN11 coverage extremely difficult because of the lack of information. You can’t learn the full story of something with only a few hours of feeds and three episodes a week.
Now that I’ve had a full season of Digital Dailies, it’s time to objectively discuss what worked, what didn’t work, what I hated about them, and what I maybe loved about them. Let’s start with the good.
The Good
It was nice to not have to be glued to the Big Brother Live Feeds all day. This meant that I could watch my few hours in the morning and go about my day, at least that’s what I hoped. There were some hiccups from here to there with the release of them, but the Digital Dailies were pretty consistent with when they were posted and the time length you can expect on each day.
It was nice that the Digital Dailies aired from Monday through Saturday instead of daily. This meant that the weekends were mostly free. The Saturday Digital Dailies were usually less than two hours and none on Sundays. It was also nice that most of them showed the events from the previous days, so you can predict what would be revealed on each day (such as Power of Veto Competition results, HOH results, nominations, etc.).
The BBCAN producers also weren’t completely stingy with information. They made sure to include enough to make assumptions or you could figure out things from information. They also sometimes just left clips in that told you things, like who won the Invisible HOH.
Personally, I didn’t want any non-game information, but for those who like silly games, showmance content, and family dinners, the Digital Dailies gave that as well. It wasn’t all game talks.
The Bad
There wasn’t enough information is my main issue with the Digitial Dailies. Players like Dan S never really got a chance to show their personalities because they were barely shown on the episodes and the Digital Dailies. The best thing about the feeds is that you see relationships and contestants’ personalities more because you have (sometimes) unfiltered access to these feeds. Ty and Kuzie basically became best friends and we only really got a sense of this during her eviction week.
We saw some of the development of their relationship, but not enough to know their closeness. Then allegedly, Santina and Rob could have become a showmance but we never really got to see more of this flirtation that made Shanaya so upset. We missed things like fights and alliances forming. Any reality TV show can show us heavily edited content, and that’s not why most of us watch Big Brother. We want to see all aspects of this game from the human connections to the strategic maneuvers. We were deprived of most of that this season.
It made it hard to really invest in the players and the game. The lack of Big Brother Canada 11 Live Feeds also made my investment in the season decrease. It can’t feel like a triumph or loss unless you care about the players and that comes with watching them on the Live Feeds.
It also somehow took much more work without the Live Feeds. I had to neglect other activities and work to start watching the Digitial Dailies the moment I woke up to not get too behind with information. Then at times, I watched two hours of nothing useful. I also didn’t have as much to write about because I only had what was on the Digital Dailies. Whereas normally, I have at least several hours of daily content to pick from to report on.
It also forced me to pay more attention to the little information provided to have to play detective. I also had to get more creative with content with so little information. This all equaled more work and not less of it.
The Digital Dailies also allowed for even more manipulation because we have no clue what was edited out. This is why some fans, myself included, don’t enjoy just watching the episodes. They give producers all the control to paint situations however they see fit. The Digital Dailies allowed this as well.
I’m not saying the producers pushed a certain narrative. I’m saying I don’t know because I had nothing to compare it to than what I was shown. The Live Feeds are in real-time so you get a better sense of what’s happening and why it’s happening. If things are edited, you can only go by what you are shown and not by what you know from live-action.
The Verdict
Personally, I would give it a C+.
Overall, Big Brother Canada and all Big Brother shows don’t feel the same without the feeds. If they continue doing the Digital Dailies, I hope they extend them to include more hours and maybe divide them into actual game information and just fun stuff that people may or may not want to watch. I would prefer the Live Feeds to come back, but I wouldn’t stop watching if we continue to just get Digital Dailies. I just wish they would consider reworking them.
I found the Digital Dailies more stressful than expected. If anything, I expected to have less work to do and not more. With the elimination of the Live Feeds, I had more time to focus on creating content because I wasn’t so focused on watching content, and I think that’s the biggest strength of the Digital Dailies. However, Big Brother just isn’t Big Brother without Live Feeds.
Let us know how you would grade the Digital Dailies by voting in our poll. Also, share in the comment section what you loved, hated, would improve, or would change about the Big Brother Canada Digital Dailies.
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