Where did Big Brother start and who created it?

You are obviously familiar with Big Brother, and just saw Chelsie Baham play the fourth perfect game in the American version of the show’s history, but do you know how and where it started and who was the first-ever winner?

Most versions of Big Brother are confined to players from an individual country, but there are and have been several regional versions of the show that have Houseguests from multiple countries.

Big Brother UK originally allowed contestants from Ireland, but ITV2’s reboot dictated that applicants could only come from the UK, so only players from England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland can now participate.

Let’s examine where our favorite show started, when, who created it, what the major influences were, where it got its name, who won the first Big Brother, and who has won the biggest grand prize in the show’s storied 26-year history.

Who came up with the idea for Big Brother?

Big Brother was conceived by Dutch billionaire John de Mol, Bart Romer, and Patrick Scholtze at an independent branch of John de Mol Produkties called Endemol Productions in the Netherlands on Thursday, September 4, 1997, when the quartet was brainstorming about ideas for a new TV show.

Their original idea was to put six contestants in a lavish house, closed off to the public, for a year with the eventual winner getting 1,000,000 guilders. Their original name for the show was “The Golden Cage” (De Gouden Kooi). It first came to the airwaves in the Netherlands in late 2006.

Besides Big Brother, De Mol, a media tycoon who created the production companies Endemol and Taipa, also gave birth to the popular reality shows Fear Factor, The Voice, Star Academy, and Deal or No Deal. De Mol has a net worth of around $1.8 billion.

Where did the creators get their influences?

De Mol and his Endemol cohorts actually came up with the idea for Big Brother after following the Biosphere 2 experiment in Oracle, Arizona which saw eight men and women put inside a steel geodesic dome with five biomes in 1991 and cut off from the public to see if they could exist on their own.

Also, a big influence on the creators of Big Brother was MTV’s hit groundbreaking reality show, The Real World. Housemates on The Real World would do isolated “confessions” for the show while Houseguests on BB have “Diary Room sessions.”

Another influence was a TV show from Sweden called the 1997 debut Expedition Robinson—now just Robinson—which places a group of strangers in an isolated place in two tribes and tries to avoid elimination by a vote from their fellow contestants until there is only one player left.

This show, which is still on the air in Sweden on TV4 is also where the hit CBS show Survivor has its roots. So we can thank the Dutch and the Swedes for Big Brother and Survivor (CBS, Wednesday, 8 ET/8 PT).

In what country was Big Brother first aired?

The first Big Brother hit the airwaves back in 1999 in the Netherlands on Veronica and the house was very primitive, especially when compared to some of the luxurious and elaborate houses we have seen on Big Brother US, Big Brother UK, Big Brother Canada, and Big Brother Australia this millennium.

After aiming for a year inside the house, producers decided on making it just 100 days. The first episode aired on September 16, 1999, and ended on December 31, 1999. The first hosts ever in the Netherlands were Rolf Waters and Daphne Decker. The series had three different runs in the country.

The winner of the first Big Brother ever, Big Brother 1 Netherlands, was Bart in ‘t Veld with Ruud Benard as the runner-up. The season lasted 106 days and started with 12 Housemates. Women would win the next three seasons of Big Brother Netherlands.

Now in 't Veld is a 48-year-old TV producer in the Netherlands and is still trying to shed the image Big Brother 1 Netherlands gave to him. The Times newspaper in London interviewed in 't Veld and he admitted he had five nervous breakdowns in eight years and missed his lost privacy as a human being.

So even after winning the first Big Brother ever, the money, making history, and landing a job in TV, in 't Veld still wasn’t happy with the celebrity culture beast the franchise has suddenly created.

""If it's true that I helped to create that mindless monster, I'm not too proud of it...Big Brother took away the need to make inspiring programmes and replaced them with mindless chatter. It's time to put it in a museum for weird artifacts of television history." —Bart in ‘t Veld"

What was the first-ever Big Brother grand prize?

In 't Veld won ƒ250,000 on Big Brother 1 Netherlands, which comes out to $123,476.94 and €113,445. Little did Dutch billionaire de Mol know exactly what he started.

Where does Big Brother get its name from?

The name of the show comes from British writer George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel from 1949 titled Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character called “Big Brother” is the leader of the ruling party named Ingsoc (English + Socialism) in a fictional totalitarian state named Oceania. Ingsoc had total control over all of Oceania’s inhabitants.

Like in the Orwell book, the producers wield total control of the Housemates or Houseguests, and like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the cameras follow their every move and don’t let them get away with anything—including “real food” when contestants in our American version are forced to eat slop for the week.

Has there been a time when Big Brother wasn’t on a TV somewhere?

On the air in so many countries for so many years, you would think that there would always be a season of Big Brother on some country’s TV somewhere, but there have actually been four instances when the show was nowhere to be found.

But from January 2005 to the present day, there has always been a Big Brother being competed in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Here are the four-time that there was no BB franchise running:

• There was a 59-day gap between the season finale of the aforementioned first-BB ever, Big Brother Netherlands 1 (December 31, 1999), and the premiere of Big Brother Germany 1 (February 27, 2000).
• There was a 20-day absence between the season finale of Big Brother Portugal 1 (December 31, 2000) and the opener of Big Brother Portugal 2 (January 19, 2001).
• There was a 19-day gap between Big Brother Portugal 3 and Big Brother Greece 1 (January 1, 2002) and the season opener of Big Brother Stjarntecken (January 19, 2002).
• There was just a 1-day void (January 12, 2004) between the season finale of Spain’s Gran Hermano 5 (January 11, 2004) and the season opener of Big Brother Brasil 4 (January 13, 2004).

Currently, as of November 1, there are at least 10 Big Brother seasons going on, including Big Brother UK, Gran Hermano 19 (Spain), and Grande Fratello 18 (Spain).

What was the biggest grand prize ever won on Big Brother?

The player who has theoretically won the most prize money in a single season of Big Brother is Tan Xiangjun, who took home a $1,449,420 endorsement contract (CNY 10 million) on Big Brother China: Pilot Season (Housemates, Let’s Stay Together), which was competed from November 21, 2015, to January 6, 2016, and exclusively streamed on Youku and Tudou, but never produced.

On Big Brother Germany 5, Sascha Sirtl beat out 58 other Houseguests in the 419-episode, 365-day marathon that went from March 2, 2005, to March 1, 2006, on RTL Zwei, the longest worldwide Big Brother season ever.

And according to Guinness World Records, Big Brother Germany 5 has the honor of being the longest uninterrupted live TV show to ever be broadcast.

In Big Brother US, the most money a Houseguest has ever won came on Big Brother 24 when the 27-year-old personal stylist from west Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Tayor Hale won $800,000on September 25, 2022, taking the grand prize money of $750,000 as well as the $50,000 prize for being America’s Favorite Houseguest.