Scheduling and Prize Money Theories

Two conversations tend to dominate quiet times in the house - prize money and the timeline of the season. It appears that the contestants in the game know as little about what's going to happen as we do.

Julie Chen indicated on last night's show that the plan is for a full season, but I find that highly unlikely. At the rate they're going, the house will be empty by early April. Yet I don't think there's any way the show will not go much farther than that.

May is the most important month of the year for network television, as it's "sweeps". With the writer's strike now over, the networks will be airing nothing but new episodes of every series during that entire month. Add to that the finales of all of the reality shows, particularly American Idol, which is already trouncing Big Brother in the ratings.





I can see the Big Brother finale airing at the beginning of Sweeps, but that's it. Yet I also don't see the show splitting the pairs anytime soon. What I think could happen would be a surprise for the contestants once it got down to two pairs. They could suddenly announce that the HOH contest will be an individual event, and instead of putting up two people they would personally boot somebody on that week's live show. The drama would be whether they kick out their partner for strategic purposes or somebody from the other team. Sort of a choose your "soulmate" or best friend type of scenario. This would be repeated the next week to reduce the field to two people.





As for the prize money, it's been said many times that their contract says for ONE winner to receive $500,000. Believe it or not, this leads me to believe that the couples may remain intact, and it would be a house vote as to which person in a pair receives the grand prize.