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'Big Brother' Exec Hears Your Ideas

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Have you considered whether to start giving the houseguests headlines from the outside world, if only to improve some of those excruciating poolside discussions?
ALLISON GRODNER: Since when have Big Brother contestants ever cared about politics? Seriously, I wish they would. That's the genius of Big Brother contestants, because in order to subject yourself to this kind of thing, there is a certain level of narcissism that makes you not give a damn about the outside world. Why aren't they discussing things of political importance? Because honestly, they care about themselves. Maybe we'll have a competition where we make them vote. You can't leave the house unless you vote. How about that?

Here's another reader suggestion. Why not offer the evictees the chance to give the money to a dummy winner so they won't have to reward one of the final two if they despise them both?
A dummy wins Big Brother? Come on. Big Brother has a winner. The good guy doesn't always win. It's real. And some years, yeah, you're going to be disappointed, but hey, it's life.

Are you in any way influenced by the running CBS.com popularity poll of the houseguests? Like, you might try to keep someone in longer who is popular with fans?
First off, the idea that we're helping people on the show, please! That does not happen. This is a program where the producers are as removed as you possibly can be, relatively speaking, compared to other shows. We want it to be fair for everybody. As far as the CBS poll, I think it's fun to see the popularity, but honestly, there's so many great sites for Big Brother across the Web that everyone is always constantly checking, [and those sites] also have popularity polls. So it's not like we rely on just one source to find out who's popular in the house, and it certainly does not mean that anything happens differently to any houseguest, so no.

You've stated repeatedly that no other show is scrutinized quite the way Big Brother is. So why stay with it?
You're right. I quit. It's stressful. What can I say? I really don't think our fans appreciate that, 'cause they are so involved in being the scrutinizers. There is no show that has this kind of 24-7 scrutiny, and then add Showtime's Big Brother: After Dark on top of that, as well as how many websites we have following us. But what makes the show so great is that we have those rabid fans — we have people who are so involved, that get so drawn in that they want to call us on everything. I mean, the truth is, if we didn't have that, then we wouldn't have a successful show. It can be stressful, of course, but I'd love everyone to know out there how careful we are here at Big Brother. It really is important for us that the integrity of the game stays as intact as it possibly can and that we can create an entertaining and fair show.