New Delhi: The racism controversy involving Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty seems to have dealt a death knell to British television Channel4's reality show Celebrity Big Brother, with the board of Channel 4 convening on Monday to discuss a possible termination of the seven-year-old reality TV programme.
According to London’s Sunday Times, if the board decides to pull down the curtains on the show, it may come as early as this week after the present series ends.
In such an event, the show will see its death in Britain at a time when it has become a roaring success with millions of TV viewers elsewhere with TV channels in as many as 20 countries, including India, having copied the format to make millions of dollars in reality TV business.
According to Sunday Times, several members of the Channel 4 board are of the view that the allegations of racism, surfaced in the show last week, have so discredited the show that it is doing immense harm to the channel and damaging race relations.
The board is chaired by Luke Johnson, former head of Pizza Express. Other board members include film producer Lord Puttnam, former head of BBC News Tony Hall, dotcom entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox, and Karren Brady, managing director of Birmingham city football club.
"Does this sort of programme still hold up today?" the Sunday Times quoted one senior board member saying about Big Brother.
"Britain's race relations are still pretty fragile, so we must be very careful," he said.
Channel 4 is also believed to be looking at the commercial viability of the show after the main sponsor of Celebrity Big Brother, Carphone Warehouse, withdrew its £3 million sponsorship at the height of the racism controversy.
Subsequently, several other sponsors – like baby food manufacturer Cow and Gate and moneysupermarket.com – too pull out of their commitments to the show.
The latest blow came from Indian-born Karan Bilimoria's Cobra Beer and United Biscuits, when they too decided to dissociate themselves from the reality TV show.
The Celebrity Big Brother show was reported to have earned Channel 4 between seven to 10 per cent of its total £800 million advertising income during the past seven years. Channel 4 is a state-owned channel but it runs on a self-financing basis.
The ratings for the show were witnessing a gradual dip before the latest controversy. Viewing figures rose only after Jade Goody and some other housemates ridiculed Shetty over her accent, her name, her food and her behaviour. On Friday, Goody was voted out of the house.
According to Sunday Times, the board has asked for a paper to be drafted quickly to explore what went wrong last week and to examine whether the programme should be ended. "Is the franchise dying now?" the newspaper quoted another board
member as saying.
When asked for reaction, a board member said: "It certainly seems to be dying. Left to its own devices – that is, a so-called normal Big Brother without any manufactured row – it seems to be dying on its feet."
The board members are also questioning the legitimacy of the channel's policy of "sustaining the programme simply by turning up the volume to grab attention when the channel itself has no control over the outcome."
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