Recycling HMs

While I'm on the topic of auditions, I'll cover an issue I have with past HMs submitting videos to audition for this year's series. NOT ON! They've had their chance.

Videos were submitted by Paul (BB04), Vesna (BB05), and Cruz (BB07 White Room) to be housemates in BB08. How disappointing would it be to see a housemate return outisde of an All-Star series, or as some BB stunt.

Paul pointed out in his audition video that there was nothing in the contracts or terms & conditions stating a past housemate could not re-apply. Well, there should be! And if there isn't, producers should not even consider these applicants for another position in the show. What could an audience gain from having to vote out a housemate all over again? And it would give them an unfair advantage / disadvantage because audiences would already know a lot about them from Day 1, when we're trying to get to know all the others. And there are rules about discussions of past series of BB-- a rule that is important to prevent repetitiveness of series. This would be almost impossible to keep up if an ex-HM went in as a new housemate.

Let's hope this was just a cheap publicity stunt by BB to increase interest in the online voting process.

Auditions

Initially when the news came out that BB auditions would be changing I thought it would be great. Applicants submit a video and WE GET TO VOTE FOR THEM! It seemed like the perfect way to:
a) give the viewers a chance to have a say in the stars of the show;
b) give ESS a loophole when viewers complain about the HM choices!

A few issues arose however.

• Very few people actually submitted a video. Each year the producers say tens of thousands of people auditioned, however this year I believe under 1000 videos were put onto the website as contenders. Whether this shows the lack of interest in the show, or the laziness of HM-wannabes is unknown.
• The videos that were selected as contenders were BORING!!!! After all the information on how to make your video stand out, very few took the simple advice of just being open and honest. I wanted to see potential HMs talk about themselves and what makes them special. But most talked utter crap, in most cases with no shirt on. A 90 second video of you frollicking on a beach or playing your guitar does not sell you as interesting housemate material, given that the house neither has a beach nor a guitar!

For these reasons I ended up watching very few videos and voting for maybe only 6 or so. I say if that's the way it's going to be done, I'll let fate choose the HMs again, and I'll just watch the show for what it is with the HMs that are given to me.

One good thing to see was that there were older applicants, and I really think this year the show needs to include HMs from all age groups. And not 10 under 30s and 2 over-60s. They need a few teens, a few 20s, a few 30s, 40s, 50s, and overs! Really diversify it. It will help with the audience too. Older people (Channel 9 watchers) don't want to watch a bunch of 20 year olds.

It would seem the producers are not even happy with the way their audition process worked as it has been reported that people who did not submit videos or were not voted in the top 50 were still asked to come in for face to face auditions. And they left their definitions in the T&Cs wide open so that the "Top 2" that get a free pass into the house could be taken to mean several different things: highest rated, most number of votes in total, etc.

In the end, after what I believe to be a screw up in changing the audition process, I don't really care how the HMs are selected. I will either love them, or love to hate them. As long as they are not carbon copies of every other year.