O&A Board Veteran Registered: Sep. 00
| TV ``Master Plan'' will outdo ``Big Brother''
By Marlene Edmunds
AMSTERDAM (Variety) - The Dutch production company behind ''Big Brother'' has unveiled its newest reality format, ``The Master Plan,'' which pushes the privacy envelope even further by asking participants to give up control of their lives for a year.
In what is being dubbed as ``the ultimate 'Big Brother''' by Endemol Entertainment chairman and chief creative officer John de Mol, five people will be monitored by camera and microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while they take orders from a ``master'' via electronic messages.
The master could tell them to pack their bags and leave home for another country at a moment's notice, or give other orders that could irretrievably change the course of the contestants' lives.
The show's chief characteristic is that there appears to be no guarantees: The master even decides at the end of the year whether the participants will get a cash prize and how much.
Contestants must be at least 22, mainly because they will need ``guts'' and maturity, noted De Mol.
The show bows in January, although the name of the broadcaster has not yet been disclosed. Plans are in the offing to air ``The Master Plan'' in other territories, including Scandinavia, Germany and Portugal.
``Big Brother'' was the first show to invade contestants' privacy, shutting them in a house without outside contact and filming them almost all the time. ``The Master Plan'' will be 100 times more invasive, according to Endemol.
``Big Brother'' airs in some 20 territories around the world and is in its third season in the Netherlands, renamed ``Big Brother -- the Battle,'' where it is shocking viewers and politicians in this liberal nation. It has been moved to a later time slot because of scenes involving sex and verbal abuse.
"I didn't realize how tragic it [the WTC attack] was until the celebrities told me"- Ron Bennington
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