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Easy money

Sean Coughlan
Guardian

Saturday July 6, 2002

My wallet always gets nervous when it hears the theme music for Big Brother. Because there can never have been a programme that tried so many different ways to get the viewers' money.

First of all there's the voting. In last year's series, more than 16m votes were cast. If the same happens this year, and with phone votes costing 25p, that will raise a cool Ł4m. It's a long way from Hughie Green's clapometer, which never raised more than an eyebrow.

Of course, the programme is horribly addictive and people like to get involved. But if you look at the voting process wearing your accountancy goggles, it's a puzzling case of millions of viewers sending their hard-earned money to television and phone companies.

The plugging for phone voting is relentless. The spin-off programme, Big Brother's Little Brother, seems to be carrying more polls than a Warsaw tram. There are endless mini-votes and phone-ins, sucking in extra cash with the small talk.

And if you're wondering about the first couple to have got it together beneath the Big Brother bedclothes - I can tell you their identity. It's the telephone and television that have been shagging away on our screens.

This love affair runs right through the production. Before you even get to the programme, you have to watch those rather lame adverts from mobile phone company O<->2 . As well as being the show's sponsor, O<->2 receives a slice of the text voting revenue.

And through to the closing credits the programme is tangled up in phone lines. The programme is made by Endemol UK, part of the Endemol group, which is owned by the multinational telecom company Telefonica. And if you look at other countries' versions of Big Brother, you'll see similar link-ups with phone companies.

Not only can you pay to vote, but you can also use your mobile for Big Brother text alerts and news updates. Or you can play a "virtual housemate" game or a text quiz, with each message costing 25p (on top of your network's usual text message charge). There are also phone vouchers for Ł4.99, providing 36 alerts over four weeks, plus a ringtone, which will no doubt appeal to the Generation Text youngsters who watch the show.

But when you see that the "audioline" offering latest news from the series is charging 60p per minute, you could be forgiven for thinking that Big Brother is a phone service with a programme attached, as much as the other way around.

The sales pitch isn't just a phone affair. If you go to the Big Brother website there are other ways to part with your cash - apart from the usual books, magazines, caps and T-shirts.

There's a link to the official online bookmaker of the series, Ladbrokes, with the latest odds on which housemate is going to win. There are also Big Brother-branded gambling games, such as scratchcards and slot machines.

If you want to watch streamed coverage over the internet, you can pay Ł9.99 per month for this service. But an increasing number of enthusiasts will be watching the extended live coverage on the E4 channel. And if you have interactive television, you can use that to vote as well (for a fee).

How much does it cost to watch Big Brother on E4? Digital television and mobile phone operators both have the type of billing systems that make it difficult to work out how much you pay for each part of a service.

You can't subscribe to E4 as an individual channel, it comes as part of a package of channels, which might be bundled in with telephone services or pay-per-view films. And if you've got 90 channels, but at least 75 of them are howlingly awful, how do you isolate a price for the channels you watch?

Nobody in their right mind would choose to pay to watch repeats of Family Fortunes or Bracelet Showcase on a shopping channel. Except these are showing this week on my television, so that means I'm paying for them.

In my experience, the only certainty for digital television and mobile phones is that the cost is always more than you expected. And looking at the rather tattered state of my own finances, it's remarkable how much spending on phones and television has risen. We might think of the basic service bills as gas, electricity and water, but direct debits for phone and television can now be the biggest utility expenses.

Big Brother, which is designed to fish in whatever revenue streams are flowing, highlights these changes. A few years ago, television's idea of interactivity would have meant a postcard to Goal of the Month. Now it means pressing the red button and watching a load of extra charges appear on your monthly bills.

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