When we think of the pillars of what it takes to be a successful Big Brother (or Survivor) player, one can usually point to 3 key pillars. Strategic, Social, and Physical/Mental (competitions). The higher “skill points” you have in these categories the better you will do on these shows in general. But there is a key 4th pillar that I think people overlook, it’s the element of production. After Ben’s win in Survivor it really made me think about this more. But I will focus on Big Brother solely for this article as it tends to be more egregious . I will do my best to cite examples from AMAs on reddit, interviews, and past events in the BB House.

As the show went on, and especially in the Grodner era, production interference has increased. For those not aware the Grodner era is referring to the head producer Allison Grodner. Arnold Shapiro was the original head producer from seasons 1-7. He is responsible for the golden era of Big Brother. Grodner takes over starting at season 8 and begins to change the metagame of Big Brother. Twists get crazier and the variance in the game goes through the roof. Though Shapiro is not immune from interference. Im James’s AMA he criticized a lot of the competitions in his seasons being much in the favor of Janelle and a bunch of the competitions in AS being unfair. Now wether this is valid or not is to be debated. But I will mostly be focusing on the seasons in the Grodner Era for this essay.

The Production Game

I want to define what I mean by the production game. Production refers to the planners/decision makers that control the whole process of the game. These are the people that you don’t see that are making the decisions about how the show is edited/produced/executed. The production game refers to manipulating the producers, editors, etc in order to gain an edge. This has many aspects. For one, it’s about crafting a story/image in a way that makes you someone that people want to root for. Your story arc has to be compelling and you have to add something to the game. The best example of this is Rachel 2.0

Rachel was successful in manipulating her image in her 2nd season and her fanbase in a way that made her story very compelling. To a point where Pandora’s Box literally gave her another life. Now this could be countered by the person not opening Pandora’s Box. But the decision to include it in the game is hard to dismiss than anything else other than production interference.

Crafting a Narrative

I think if anyone enters the House in the current era you must be aware of the importance of your brand. When you enter the house you’re building your fanbase. You need to have a narrative that makes you rootable or somewhat of an engaging character. This increases the chance production will want you to stick around as well as the ability to win fan votes when they come up.

Derrick was a less severe example of having a strong production game. He was able to control/manipulate the game, in what some would argue was a pretty boring season. But at the same time he was able to be engaging in DRs and present his story in a way that gave the producers a lot to work with to sell him.

I mentioned Derrick but there is also someone from his season that had a horrible production game. Frankie Grande. He was able to have a very strong fanbase from his Youtube channel/brand outside of the house. But once he was in there he was pretty despised by Big Brother fans. So much so that there was a Big Brother Rewind twist put into the game to get him out of the house. The guy was a comp beast, had it not been for that twist it’s very possible we could have been left with Frankie as a winner.

The Information

In Bruno’s AMA (I believe). He talked about how DRs work. Often time the producers ask you questions to answer. And this is where can get edges over the other houseguests. He mentioned that if you think about what they are asking you/digging for you can really figure out a lot about house dynamics/information you would otherwise never have. You are talking to the only omniscient source in the game. While talking to that source your goal should be to extract as much information as possible.

Another part where this comes into play is GBMs (Goodbye Messages). Paul just had his AMA on reddit, he mentioned that they record multiple GBMs and chose which ones to show houseguests. This is huge, you have to be very careful with the words you chose and know how to balance your range (balance the emotions/information you reveal in each version of your GBM). This is something that shocked me when I found out. If production wants a certain outcome and you give them something that they can exploit, it can really hurt you.

Grodner/editors aren’t dumb. They know the reactions to fans watching Paul’s game last season and watching Josh. I’d have a hard time believing that there was no thought behind chosing which GBMs to play in order to try to push a certain outcome. I think when people mention Josh’s GBMs they don’t see the big picture. He was playing one of the strongest production games since Rachel Riley. From his over the top confessionals, to him starting shit, and his ridiculous smashing pans and singing, it was all to craft his narrative. Now I’m not saying this was all deliberate, but he absolutely benefited from being an engaging character.

The final information that you can exploit is something that’s not necessarily a thing production is explicitly doing. It is information that comes from outside of the game. Throughout Big Brother history there have been planes that people have purchased to fly messages above the house, people that yell over the fence, and audience reactions.

I believe in BB8 there was a message flown against Eric. And even recently there have been banners flown as well. Usually they try to get people in the house ASAP, but that doesn’t always prevent people from seeing that. This is almost impossible to counter directly. You can’t control which crazy Big Brother fan is going to yell something or buy a banner plane. What you can control is the image you send to the audience and how you react to it. You can control your image by trying to portray yourself favorably where people won’t want to hurt your game. You can control how you react to it but trying to find out what it said as soon as possible and play damage control.

The last aspect of this I want to touch on is audience reactions. From Bruno’s AMA he mentioned that they were able to hear the audience cheering against Neda in his season (BBCAN5). That gave them information about how she was viewed, how her alliance was viewed, and just perspective based things that you could use to try to figure out why people were rooting against/for certain people. This can be huge from a jury management perspective. You can see how certain people are perceived and try to gain any information you can from this.

Challenges

The final element I want to mention is people beating the production through challenges. A lot of the time when you go on Big Brother, you can have a good idea of the challenges that are going to be on the show. The show tends to repeat a lot of challenges season after season. When it comes to preparing for this two players come to mind.

First is Nicole 2.0. The example that stands out to me is Stay/Fold 2.0. She was the first houseguest to game the system and strategically try to break the challenge. She was able to use Corey as a “blocker” in order to prevent her from getting knocked out when she had a point lead at one point. I remember Ian Terry tweeting out that it was the best Stay/Fold play he’s ever seen. She was able to plan ahead and know that there was a good shot that this comp would be played.

The last contestant I want to talk about is Kevin Martin from BBCAN5. He is the best example of this. Without this, plain and simple, he would not have won BBCAN5. Kevin is a poker player, he makes his living off of beating a game. Before he went on from his 2nd bullet he had a book of every single competition played in Big Brother Canada. He went to study them and tried to devise a strategy on the best way to beat each. He had an assistant to help him train. Never in the history of the game has someone trained that hard to where they ultimately beat production through brute force in the competitions. His game wasn’t even that amazing at time, but he was able to make a huge run of challenges to secure his victory.

i didn’t read any of this