There was a major change to the Big Brother format this past season, and now, the show’s executive producers are revealing if that change will stick around in future seasons.
This year, the live eviction episode that aired on Thursday nights featured a big twist: the AI arena. In past seasons, after the veto competition earlier in the week, two houseguests would be up for eviction. This made the live Thursday vote less exciting, as it usually meant houseguests knew which contestant would be voted off in advance.
However, with the addition of the AI arena, as many as 4 houseguests could have been nominated in any one eviction cycle. With the AI arena happening live on Thursdays, houseguests would never really know who was going to be going home as the winner of the new twist could remove themselves from the block.
About why they made the change, executive producer Allison Grodner shared with EW, “The Head of Household competition had quite a few times moved out of that episode. So we really felt like we needed to service the live eviction episode and amp it up, and I think we did.”
Executive producer Rich Meehan shared, “Creatively, we really wanted to try was to make the live episode more unpredictable and make it more exciting and entertaining. We felt like it kind of got into a little bit of a pattern over the last few years where there was a lot of unanimous votes.”
Rich added, “It made the live show more unpredictable. It created kind of a must-see event of what’s going to happen, and hopefully it was part of the reason why we didn’t have one-sided votes. The live show was more dramatic. From a viewer’s perspective, you never know what’s going to happen, which is really the goal.”
So could the AI arena be here to stay?
Allison shared, “I think the AI arena was a big success, and we’ve learned a lot from it. I think it’s something that as we look towards the summer, nothing’s ever going to be exactly the same. We love mixing things up. But I think the essence of that, it’s very likely to be carried forward.”