The recently completed season 26 of Big Brother was a truly unique installment of the CBS reality show. For one thing, it was the rarest of birds — a controversy-free season of a program in which controversy is almost impossible to avoid due to the presence of a 24-hour live feed beaming every single word said to a national audience.
For the producers, not having to put social media fires out along the way was a welcome change of pace. “When we’re able to just focus on the show and the creative of the show and all of those things, it really is much more fun than dealing with all the outside stuff,” executive producer Rich Meehan tells Entertainment Weekly.
“It was lovely,” adds fellow executive producer Allison Grodner. “It was really nice. And overall, the reception from our usually very critical fan base was really positive, so it was a nice summer.”
A big part of that positive reception had to do with one of the biggest format changes in Big Brother franchise history. Instead of just two nominees being put on the block for eviction by the Head of Household during the pre-jury portion of the game, three different houseguests were nominated. And then on eviction night, the three nominees on the block after the Veto would compete in a live contest in the BB AI Arena, with the winner safe from elimination.
Not only did the new twist mean players were not sure who would still be on the block until moments before the live voting took place, it also made it possible that four different folks would be nominated for eviction if someone was removed by the winner of the Veto competition, thereby getting even more blood on the Head of Household’s hands. And that possibility became a reality when the Veto was amazingly used 11 weeks in the row, sometimes even by the HOH themselves.
The entire genesis of the AI Arena idea came out the fact that in recent years there had increasingly been no competitions at all on the Thursday live episodes. “The Head of Household competition had quite a few times moved out of that episode,” notes Grodner. “So we really felt like we needed to service the live eviction episode and amp it up, and I think we did.”
The goal, it seems, was to make the live episodes feel… well, more live. “Creatively, we really wanted to try was to make the live episode more unpredictable and make it more exciting and entertaining,” Meehan says. “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.”
With the new AI Arena competition leading to last-minute pleading and scrambling, there was definitely more juice and intrigue to what had become a generally unsurprising Thursday night affair, which is always a no-no for a show whose motto is expect the unexpected. “It made the live show more unpredictable,” Meehan says. “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.”
The producers remembered a famous live puzzle failure as they crafted their AI Arena plans. “We knew from having watched Kaitlyn’s famous loss in season 20 that there’s something about that live sporting event, no matter what it is, that’s exhilarating and really, really fun,” Grodner says. “The stakes are so high, and I think that in a way is more exciting than the HOH contest in that episode.”
Another inspiration was the show’s recent Christmas-themed winter edition. “It’s something that we really enjoyed when we did Reindeer Games,” adds Meehan. “Every challenge was super important. It really meant something. So adding that element into the live show was a little bit of a byproduct of that as well. Those challenges were always so high stakes that we were like, ‘How do we add that layer into Big Brother?’”
But the big question now becomes: Will it be back for Big Brother 27? While the show is not likely to repeat the exact AI theme, will it stick with the three-nominee and live Thursday night competition format for the pre-jury portion of the season? “I think the AI arena was a big success, and we’ve learned a lot from it,” Grodner answers. “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.”
So while we may have seen the last of Ainsley, it appears her impact on the game may continue to be felt for seasons to come.