Celebrity Big Brother US 2 - 2019

Well the new house reveal has happened ahead of the Jan 21 launch of the 2nd edition of Celebrity Big Brother US. Of course CBS has not spent much money doing any major structural changes to the house. This years theme is clearly New York Art Deco. The house features a many Big Apple/Manhattan features. Loft beams and subway tiles with an art deco feeling to it. There is also loads of brick and wooden giving the spaces a warmer feeling. Knowing they are never going to completely rebuild the house, until it catches fire or collapses on live tv on some houseguests, this is a fairly good design. I normally never give BB USA props on any of their house designs. But I have to say. They actually did a fairly decent job. The glaring irritating point is they refuse to the address the wonky ceiling tiles and lighting disaster. (BB Canada had a light scrim stretched across the ceilings, and since the move to a new location they install up lighting with light washing across a white ceiling for an even lighting) Of course the ceiling will never be shot on television or on the feeds. Its just peeve that I have. Overall the house is decent for the theme they chose. The house designers dont to modern very well and they never well. I can now imagine what the 2019 BBUSA Civilian version is going to look like. (Cant believe I just typed that). Because CBS is notorious for minimal structural changes. So dont expect the double bedroom from last Civilian BB to return. They put the wall back up. I will post more pics as they come in. So far we havent seen the living room, the kitchen and the backyard. Incidentally the backyard/outdoor area, should again be a patio type area like the last CBB version. They used the majority of the backyard to set up the competitions and extended a tent over this area in case it rains they can continue to film with no delays. So that means no pool, thought they did have a hot tub, which didnt really get much use, which if they have one in this house i expect the same thing.
Living Room













Video HOUSE Tour

Endemol apparently has a created a completely new branding concept scheme for Big Brother. Including a new logo which incorporates the eye and a camera lens. I would imagine this is optional and not mandated. But its a nice clean look. Too bad CBS continues to hang on to the in-house garbage the continue to use. The only reason I think they never went with the eye is because CBS logo is an eye and some exec had a baby and refused to allow them to use it. But i like this clean look. The look was created by The Plant London. They even designed a specific font to use for the programme.

I see that very much as an evolution of the branding introduced for Channel 5's Big Brother (which was also used for Nine's BB Australia).

Interesting it also appears to use a variation on DIN, which BB used in the Channel 4 days.

Last night was the 2nd part of the 2night premiere and also the debut of the superlong title sequence.

But first, the #BBCeleb main titles. https://t.co/QmYjDBMfxP pic.twitter.com/Nkk6O7YKW9

— E! News (@enews) January 22, 2019

Those titles really could have been cut in half, and needs better music; not a patch on the BB theme here.

The BB US theme tune has always been closer to the original Big Brother theme:



In fact the first US series used the same tune before it became a more generic guitar riff.

BB Australia married the tune with something of a closer style to BB UK:

Ive always hated the BB US theme. Its horrible. Again its old people trying to make "cool" tv. The revamped format for Season 2 theme after the Dutch Endemol theme, was super sleepy. It was almost like it a was serious drama/soap. They used that for quite a while. THen they introduced the guitar version. They've remixed its a couple times since its been introduced. The previous version was a heavy metal sound. (Which seems to be a US reality show staple for some odd reason, but heavy metal its not a wildly popular music genre). The lastest incarnation leans a bit toward hip/hop, retaining the guitar. It seems like this year they remixed it slightly to a bit to make it longer. To me its not worth the time. It needs a completely new interpretation.



But its CBS, its never going to get a proper update. Its never been a massive show like American Idol was or America's Got Talent or even Survivor on CBS itself. Its been on for decades and is going strong and its now on air with a Celeb version, so they clearly like the show. But CBS uses it for money making and bring down the network median age and nothing else. Its never had any major money invested in it, which is clear from the repeated use of the rickety old house and the stale production. Even though this years CBB house is probably one of their better designs in many many many many years. Its not a front page show like it the UK. Its never been that.