CONTROLLING 'BIG BROTHER' FAITHFUL WEB WATCHERS MAY HAVE REVOLUTIONIZED REALITY TV AS WE KNOW IT.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

``Big Brother'' has changed the way reality television and new media can interact.

Don't laugh. As godawful as what you've seen on TV has been, Internet viewers were granted an occasionally compelling moment. What's more, Netizens changed both the dynamic in the house and the TV show's content. In other words, audiences of the Internet feeds literally wrested control of the show from its unimaginative producers and, on rare occasions, created drama for TV viewers.

``Although I agree with the description of this show as a 'train wreck,' '' cracks Lauri Hoese of Austin, one of the Internet conspirators, ``I'm searching for a better metaphor. You see, train wrecks are interesting.''

``It's a cliche to joke about how it's like watching paint dry, but when the final history of TV is written, 'Big Brother' will be considered more important than the better and the more highly rated 'Survivor,' '' declares Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

`` 'Big Brother' provided a model that Internet users and TV users might actually use, like no other convergence idea, like 'Enhanced TV,' did. Viewers took over the show, affecting storylines, and carved out a powerful set of lessons that will be applied in the future.

``It's a new way of watching a television show. In the past, someone made it, they showed it to us, we watched,'' Thompson continues. ``Now they can create programs that are jumping-off points, that can become a lifestyle. You watch the show, go to the Internet and follow it some more, and use the Internet to plot and become part of it. It takes control from out of the hands of the people making the show and into the hands of who knows who.''

Even George, the portly, high-strung roofer banished last week, admitted he got his idea for a dramatic, if briefly considered, mass walkout from one of the banners Hoese and Jeff Oswald, known collectively as Media Jammers, flew over the Big Brother compound. Even though the potential rebellion was quelled the day it began, CBS milked the potential walkout for drama for four episodes.

None of it might have happened had those responsible for ``Big Brother'' been so incompetent. While it's been a hit in every country it's aired in since debuting last year in the Netherlands, everything, it seems, went wrong for ``Big Brother'' in America:

--Casting was a botch, heavy on trailer-park personalities, self-absorbed 20-somethings and/or passive-aggressive sorts, a group so self-conscious that few arguments and even less romantic intrigue resulted inside the Studio City pressure cooker. Host Julie Chen was initially seen as a cynical gambit to promote ``The Early Show'' but emerged as worse miscasting than the houseguests.

--Viewers torpedoed CBS by voting out the show's most provocative personalities, ensuring the house's general level of somnolence. In fact, when the show offered the final six contestants $50,000 to exit the house, the group valued their comraderie more than the money: hardly the sort of dynamic the network had hoped to foster.

--Also perplexing was the producers' avoidance of potentially provocative moments - Eddie's racist jokes, Cassandra's vivid description of an African trip, the houseguests' first disgusted talk of rebellion and the airplane banners, which became so ubiquitous, CBS finally couldn't ignore them.

--Whereas ``Big Brother'' preferred to pretend its producers were in control, another reality series, BBC America's ``Castaway 2000,'' transforms its production woes into drama. ``Castaway,'' stranding 36 strangers on an island, documented the production's inability to get the compound built in time for the show's kickoff and its accidental destruction of some participants' belongings, as well as the subsequent irate walkoff by key cast members.

`` 'Castaway' is really avoiding 'Big Brother's' mistake,'' Thompson points out. ``Here, they chose to bury the conflicts between 'Big Brother' and the people in the house as if it would harm the show, when in fact that could've made that show. And that got the Internet dimension mad at the program itself. One of the places where great drama can occur, which 'Big Brother' didn't recognize, is in the conflicts between these innocent naives who come into the show-business world only to be exploited by the evil network. You can bet if CBS does 'Big Brother' again, things will be very, very different.''

Indeed, a ``BBII'' is virtually guaranteed, given impending actors and writers strikes. Who wouldn't want to watch ordinary folks struggling - and even join in the battle - against producers who would gleefully posit themselves as corporate Richard Hatches, the scheming ``Survivor'' champion, in an effort to show that Davids can still best mega-media- conglomerate Goliaths? After all, reality TV is all about getting its participants to squirm; who's to lose if a show invites viewers to turn the tables?

Though a bust on TV, ``Big Brother'' has been a boon to the Internet. Its official Web site, Bigbrother2000.com, recorded 4.25 million user hits in July, the highest among new Web sites. Viewers to that site, late on the night of Aug. 14, witnessed a revolution sputter to life in Studio City. The houseguests were all cranky, having been forced to perform a profane 'roast' with scripted gags that insulted one another.

``I was angry that CBS edited the second roast to make it appear as if the houseguests themselves had come up with those horrible 'jokes,' '' says Kaye Mallory, known to the houseguests as Megaphone Lady. (She tipped them off to the network's impending offer of money to leave the house, allowing them to steel themselves against looking greedy on-air, and encouraged them during their recent potential rebellion.) ``So when George and Britt talked about walking out together, I was in total agreement. That started the whole thing. I had to get a megaphone and let them know I was behind them.''

Also appalled was the group at Salon.com's ``Big Brother'' Table Talk thread, where Hoese, Oswald and others exchanged ideas of how to sabotage the show until 5 the next morning.

``We had been joking for some time that we wished we could 'banish' the producers,'' recalls Hoese. ``Then, the option of the houseguests leaving all together was raised. We in Internet land were galvanized and cheering this subversion on, when it was abruptly ended by the suggestion of pancakes. The houseguests drifted away from the idea, but we seized on it, and after a short period of smart-ass talk about revolution and breakfast foods, flew our first banner.''

Others began flying banners over the house, and Hoese and Oswald created a Web site - mediajammers.org - that details its grievances with ``BB,'' including serious allegations that in manipulating the show's reality, the producers are breaking laws that were set in place after the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s.

Curiously, the houseguests' attitudes toward the banners have ranged from confusion to contempt, while they openly called for Mallory.

``Ms. Megaphone was able to be almost immediately responsive to the houseguests,'' Hoese notes. ``They felt like they were interacting with her, whereas the banners felt more like criticism and made them defensive. It's interesting, though, that once we flew a banner explaining CBS had chased Ms. Meg off, the houseguests stopped asking for her. It's a sign of how anxious they are to please the show's powers-that-be. They're terrified that they're being negatively portrayed, so they try to avoid doing anything they think might result in retaliation.''

Nonetheless, the effects of Media Jammers and the Megaphone Lady contributed to what could have been great television, had CBS been clever enough to understand that, and what will probably be processed by more clever producers in the future.

``It's an amazing thing that people have had such an impact on the show,'' says Mallory. ``If I were CBS, I'd glom onto the outside 'interference' and capitalize on the publicity. Publicity means that people are paying attention! I just don't think that CBS gets that about this show. It's a new type of genre, so there have to be new rules.''