Bigg Boss

Bigg Boss

The logo for the current series

Network

Channels Sony India 2006 Colors 2008–present

Presenters

Current presenters Sanjay Dutt 2011–present

Former presenters Salman Khan 2010 Amitabh Bachchan 2009 Pooja Bedi 2008 (Aakhri Salaam) Shilpa Shetty 2008 Arshad Warsi 2006

Shows

Editions Celebrity Format 2006-present Current Shows Aapka Farmaan 2010-present Former Shows Aakri Salaam 2006-2011 Desh Ka Aadesh 2009 Aapka Faisla 2008 Janta Ka Faisla 2006

Seasons

Previous seasons Bigg Boss (season 5) Winner: Juhi Parmar Runner-up: Mahek Chahal Others: Siddharth Bhardwaj , Akashdeep Saighal, Amar Upadhyay, Sunny Leone , Pooja Misrra (ejected), Shonali Nagrani, Shraddha Sharma, Pooja Bedi, Vida Samadzai, Laxmi Narayan, Mandeep Bevli, Shakti Kapoor, Raageshwari, Gulabo Sapera, Sonika Kaliraman, Nihita Biswas Bigg Boss (season 4) Winner: Shweta Tiwari Runner-up: Khali Others: Ashmit Patel, Dolly Bindra, Samir Soni, Veena Malik, Sara Khan, Seema Parihar, Manoj Tiwari, Hrishant Goswami, Aanchal Kumar, Rahul Bhatt, Begum Nawazish, Sakshi Pradhan, Abbas Kazmi, Devender (ejected) Bigg Boss (season 3) Winner: Vindu Dara Singh Runner-up: Pravesh Rana Others: Poonam Dhillon, Bhakhtiyaar M Irani (walked), Aditi Govitrikar, Claudia Ciesla, Raju Srivastav, Rohit Verma, Vinod Kambli, Shamita Shetty (walked), Tanaaz Irani, Ismail Darbar, Sherlyn Chopra, Kamal Rashid Khan (ejected), Jaya Sawant Bigg Boss (season 2) Winner: Ashutosh Kaushik Runner-up: Raja Choudhary Others: Zulfi Syed, Rahul Mahajan (walked), Monica Bedi, Diana Hayden, Debojit Saha, Ahsaan Qureshi, Payal Rohatgi, Sambhavana Seth, Alina Wadiwala, Ketaki Dave, Rakhee Tandon, Sanjay Nirupam, Jade Goody (walked) Bigg Boss (season 1) Winner: Rahul Roy Runner-up: Carol Gracias Others: Ravi Kissen, Rakhi Sawant, Amit Sadh, Roopali Ganguly, Baba Sehgal, Ragini Shetty, Deepak Tijori, Anupama Verma, Aryan Vaid, Kashmira Shah, Deepak Parashar, Bobby Darling, Salil Ankola (ejected)

Bigg Boss is a reality TV programme broadcast in India. It follows the Big Brother format, which was first developed by Endemol in the Netherlands.

Concept

Bigg Boss is a reality show where celebrity contestants stay in a single house for about three months, with no connection to the outside world. They are overseen by a mysterious person known as 'Bigg Boss', whose only presence in the house is through his voice.

The house

A Bigg Boss House is built for every season. The house was earlier located in the tourist place of Lonavala, Pune district of Maharashtra, however the house for the fifth season is located in Karjat. The house is well-furnished and decorated. It has all kinds of modern amenities, but just one or two bedrooms and four toilet bath rooms. There is a garden, pool, activity area and gym in the House. There is also a Confession Room, where the housemates may be called in by Bigg Boss for any kind of conversation, and for the nomination process.

The House has no TV connection, no phones, no Internet connection, clocks, pen or paper.

Rules

While all the rules have never been told to the audience, the most prominent ones are clearly seen. The inmates are not permitted to talk in any other language than Hindi. They are not supposed to tamper with any of the electronic equipment or any other thing in the House. They cannot leave the House premises at any time except when permitted to. They cannot discuss the nomination process with anyone.

Nomination and eviction

Every week, each contestant is called into the 'Confession Room' by Bigg Boss, and are asked to nominate two of the other contestants. Bigg Boss selects two, and sometimes three (though the number goes higher at times) people with the highest votes, who are put up for a public vote via phone and text message. The one with the least votes is evicted on Friday. Occasionally, more than one person may be evicted at a time, like in the final episode.

Sometimes, the housemates may be nominated for other reasons, such as nomination by a person who has achieved special privileges (via tasks or other things), for breaking rules or something else. If something is very serious, a contestant may be evicted directly.

Publication

The main television coverage takes the form of a daily highlights programme and the weekly eviction show on Fridays that are aired on Colors TV, while the first season was aired on Sony TV. Everyday's episodes contain the main happenings of the previous day. Every Saturday episode mainly focuses on an interview of the evicted contestant by the host. The episode on Sunday, named differently across seasons, contains extra footage of the week, which was not included in any episode.

Series details

Season	Host	Launch date	Finale date	Days	Housemates	Winner
1	Arshad Warsi	3 November 2006	26 January 2007	86	15	Rahul Roy
2	Shilpa Shetty	17 August 2008	22 November 2008	98	15	Ashutosh Kaushik
3	Amitabh Bachchan	4 October 2009	26 December 2009	84	15	Vindu Dara Singh
4	Salman Khan	3 October 2010	8 January 2011	96	16	Shweta Tiwari
5	Sanjay Dutt	2 October 2011	7 January 2012	96	18	Juhi Parmar

Awards and Nominations

Award	Title	Winner
Golden Petal Awards	Most Chahita Personality	Salman Khan
Golden Petal Awards	Most Lokpriya Reality Show	Bigg Boss (season 4)

Controversies

Rigged Evictions and Pre-scripted Conduct of Housemates

In the fifth season Audiences figured out that with every weekly eviction, a specific trend followed, the least controversial housemate who has had the negligible interaction in fights gets evicted after getting nominated for that week. It became widely believed that contestant are getting evicted from the show as a result of not making headlines for the reality show. Zee news expressed dislike towards the show saying, "Barring a few educated and well-mannered celebrities, most of the Bigg Boss contestants have utterly failed to exercise self-restraint. As, the format of the show is such that they often fail to maintain their composure and mostly reveal a fake personality. Abuses fly thick and fast in the house, whereas morality, ethos and ethics take a backseat. The fear of eviction makes them selfish and diplomatic, compels them to switch sides for personal gains, and indulge in propaganda". Shakti Kapoor who was evicted earlier in the show after surviving four week inside the house claimed, "People have a wrong notion that I am a bad guy. Bigg Boss people got me with 13 females because they also thought I will sneak into girls room at night and do something fishy. I respect women a lot," the actor said. "But since I was not getting into anything like this or any fight or controversy I got evicted. I think there is something planned about my eviction. Everyone in the audience feels there is something wrong. I thought I would win the show and so did the people," he claimed. Pooja Bedi who was evicted weeks later also stated in an interview that housemates are merely evicted on the basis of their controversial backgrounds and that the show is pre-scripted. After Pooja Misrra's unexpected exit more than half of the viewers stopped watching the show claiming that the house was getting boring by the week. Contrary to these outcomes, Pooja Misrra was soon sent back in as Andrew Symonds' translator. Evicted housemate Bedi said about her re-entry, "Why else will they bring her in as a translator, she was fined for talking in English herself! She’s been brought back just for TRPs," Singer Raageshwari who left the show in October also claimed, "I am sure the channel decided to bring her back for entertainment value! It will certainly be interesting to see her act as Andrew’s interpreter," Another ex-inmate Shraddha Sharma stated, "There’s no one in the house now who’s giving masala to the show, that is why they found a new way to bring her back,". In previous seasons of Bigg Boss a similar tactic was used to attract TRPs, Dolly Bindra and Kamaal R Khan were also asked to leave the show. However, to encash on their controversial image, Bigg Boss brought them back. Established Pakistani Super-model Sadia Imam confessed in a morning show namely "Jaago Pakistan Jaago", that she refused to be a part of Bigg Boss, after she was reached by executives from India, claiming the show to be rigged. The actress also accuses that the show is scripted, and she was asked to do certain things, that were off her limit, on the show, including having an affair with a man inside.

Partiality towards specific Housemates

Season 3

In the third season, housemate Vindu Dara Singh was often credited as Akshay Kumar's favourite housemate after playing Kumar’s sidekick in “Kambakkht Ishq” and becoming good friends with him. With being hated by fellow inmates inside the house for his conduct accompanied by the resentment against him from the audiences Vindu survived seven evictions after consecutively getting nominated from eighth week onwards. Vindu went on to win the season and was also announced the most stylish and bold contestant consequently winning a Chevrolet Cruze and Rs. 1 crore.

Season 4

During the fourth season, TV actress Sara Khan, openly objected to the Bigg Boss' behaviour towards fellow-housemate Dolly Bindra. Ever since Dolly Bindra re-entered the house, there had been quite a bit of a change in her stance and attitude towards the inmates of the house. Dolly became quite polite and got some benefits like she was made the queen immediately after she re-entered, thereby enabling her to get certain benefits that the others couldn't even dream of. Thus, with almost everyone quite flabbergasted, Sara protested against partiality towards Dolly. Sara kept on complaining that 'Bigg Boss' was not fair at which Samir Soni, who too, had re-entered agreed with what Sara had to say. Sara was later strictly warned by the Bigg Boss and host Salman Khan regarding these vague accusations.

Season 5

The fifth season saw a change in the selection of contestants. The launch night featured 14 housemates - 12 of which were girls, one transgender and one man. The weekly selection of House Captain is usually dependent on the votes of the fellow housemates however on Day 1 Shakti Kapoor, who was the only male entrant on the show, was chosen by the Bigg Boss himself as captain for two week making him immune from two consecutive nominations and, hence, prolonging his stay inside the house. Three additional male entries were witnessed in the second, third and the fourth week. Akashdeep Saighal was very often seen abusing Mahek Chahal on her personal backgrounds but was not warned of his conduct.Siddharth Bhardwaj almost kicked Pooja M. while she was walking. Again, no action was taken against him leaving the impact that Bigg Boss does indeed favors some participants on the show to extend their stay inside the house. Moreover, the male participants were also witnessed threatening Bigg Boss that they would exit the house and were often seen exhibiting irrational traits like throwing off their mics and speaking absolutely in English language which are against the rules of the house. On Day 58, Shraddha abused Akashdeep by calling him a swear word. Akashdeep was later called in the confession room and consoled to calm with Shraddha scolded for the act.

Manipulation and Interference by Hosts

Unlike the international versions of Big Brother, in Bigg Boss, the hosts are seen to be intimidating contestants on the show for their conduct and are often witnessed interfering in almost everything exhibiting a partial stance towards few. On the Opening of the season five Salman and Sanjay ridiculed Shakti Kapoor after he entered the house saying, “Bigg Boss ko maanna padega! Shakti Kapoor jaise logon ko apne ghar bulaya, hum toh kabhi na bulayen!”. Shakti was hurt by these remarks and demanded an apology from Salman, however, was never reached by either Khan or Dutt. Later, Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt also lashed out at Siddharth Bhardwaj for being too unmannerly with Mahek Chahal and Pooja Misrra and the same continued with other housemates few weeks later when Salman Khan went inside the house on 17 December 2011 and severely scolded contestants for their behaviour. Such traits showed by the hosts have yet been never witnessed on any international series of Big Brother. On 24 December 2011, Sanjay Dutt displayed infurious attitude towards Juhi Parmar, Akashdeep Saigal and Sunny Leone for bringing out a problem that concerned them regarding Amar Upadhyay's indecent moves on female housemates. Evicted housemate Pooja Bedi after watching the episode, in fury, claimed,“It's clear Salman went in there to demoralise, confuse, hurt and lie to Sky. Any guesses as to why he would misuse his position to do so? Salman previously had threatened Sid, and said, he would kick his arse. Hosts cannot intimidate contestants! Wrong. if contestants are bad, they get nominated and if public dislikes them, they get eliminated. That's reality TV, not hosts threatening, if Salman can get aggressive with contestants, why is he upset they do so with each other?” The hosts are also seen to be very manipulative throughout the season. From altering the results to controlling appearances of celebrities, all was witnessed to be formatted by co-host Salman Khan. Due to the remarks made by Pooja Bedi on Salman's interference with the results and favoritism towards Mahek Chahal, Pooja was banned from attending the season finale to be held on 7 January 2012. The actress was humiliated on this last minute change and expressed, "So what if I disagree with a host and don't like a contestant! Is that reason for Channel not to have me at finale?” Pooja Bedi further stressed, “Have asked channel to state reason I cannot be there at finale to cheer my friends on! Also, till yesterday I was to do a medley! What changed?” Bollywood Actor Hrithik Roshan was also refused entry in the finale. Hrithik was supposed to promote his upcoming release Agneepath on the grand finale of the TV show. Sanjay Dutt, the main villain of the film, being a part of the show should have helped the marketing initiative. However, Salman has put his foot down. Khan has now asked Imran Khan to promote Karan Johar's next production Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu on the grand finale. Later, Pooja Misrra and Shakti Kapoor also fell targets. They also were banned from attending the finale because of speaking against Khan in the media. Few days prior to the finale, a re-invitation was sent to Shakti and Pooja Misrra, however, Pooja Bedi was not invited in retialitaion to which Pooja B. contemplated sending a legal notice to Colors channel for chucking her out of Bigg Boss finale.

See also

• Big Brother (UK)
• Celebrity Big Brother 2007 (UK) - Controversial series of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother involving Season 2 host Shilpa Shetty and Season 2 Housemate Jade Goody.
• Jade Goody - Appeared on the same UK version of Celebrity Big Brother with Season 2 presenter Shilpa Shetty, later to become a Season 2 Housemate.
• Pamela Anderson - Stayed inside the Bigg Boss house in the fourth season.

External links

• Official Website of Bigg Boss Season 5
• Bigg Boss at the Internet Movie Database