As Big Brother 24's premiere grows nearer, details about the new season are looking promising, especially because season 24 is set to be the shortest season in years. The length of Big Brother seasons has shifted several times over its two-plus decades on air. The first season, which had a drastically different format than its successors, was 88 days long, six days longer than the next four seasons. Seasons 2-5 were all 82-day games. Then, the season lengths ranged anywhere from 71 to 81 days and remained in that range until season 15 in 2013.
Big Brother 15, one of the show's most controversial seasons, marked a clear delineation in the show's schedule strategy. It was the first of many seasons that would be over 90 days long, meaning the houseguests who made it to the finale were locked in the house for three full months. In fact, several of these post-BB15 long hauls have maxed out at 99 days, including BB18, BB20, and BB21. Now, though, it has been announced that Big Brother 24 will be shifting back to an 82-day game, beginning with a July 6 live move-in on CBS and wrapping up on September 25.
The news of a shortened season is a pleasant surprise, as the nearly 100-day Big Brother seasons are proof of the "bigger doesn't necessarily mean better" adage. The biggest issue with long seasons is that most of the exciting gameplay is frontloaded in the first half of the game. The gameplay is much more dynamic early on when the house is full of players and the possibilities for the endgame seemingly limitless. The last few weeks of long games have proven to be a major slog in most of the seasons with 90 or more days of gameplay. The reason being is that there are so few players left in the game, all of whom thoroughly exhausted by the months they've spent gaming, so there is very little action going on in the Big Brother house in the last few weeks. Almost all of the major moves are dependent on finale-night competitions, so the live feeds are mostly dead while the edited episodes are loaded with filler content.
Shorter seasons, on the other hand, give the show the opportunity to pack a significant amount of endgame content within a short time frame, keeping the houseguests on their toes and the game fresh as it hurtles toward finale night. Two weeks makes a huge difference in Big Brother time, as the competitors become severely fatigued after a point, and in the longest seasons, their lethargy is palpable. The 80-ish-day season is a great happy medium between too long and too short. It's not a back-half slog like other modern seasons, but it's also not unrelentingly fast-paced like Celebrity Big Brother, giving viewers just the right amount of time with the houseguests before a winner is crowned.
It's astounding that Big Brother 24 is set to be the shortest season in a decade, going back to 2012's Big Brother 14. It bodes well for season 24, especially given that recent seasons have drawn criticism for being too stale and beholden to a format that is no longer serving the show's best interest. Beyond some cryptic social media hints from Julie Chen Moonves, little is known about what BB24 has in store, but it's reassuring that CBS is willing to shake up the Big Brother formula after so many years on the air.
Big Brother 24 premieres Wednesday, July 6 on CBS.
Source: Julie Chen Moonves/Twitter