It created a reality TV-show format where contestants live in an isolated house, and try to avoid being evicted by viewers to win a prize at the end.

The working title was De Gouden Kooi (The Golden Cage) and the original concept was eventually realized as a reality show on Dutch television at the end of 2006.

The format of Big Brother was also influenced by MTV's The Real World, which began in 1992 and created the concept of putting strangers together for an extended period and recording the drama that ensued.

Another pioneering reality format, the Swedish TV show Expedition Robinson, which first aired in 1997 (and was produced in many other countries as was Survivor) added to the Real World's template the idea of competition, in which contestants battled to remain in the series, fighting and defeating each other (in the context of the show, not physically) until only one remained.

The idea of introducing 24/7 streaming video was influenced by websites like Jennicam.org from Jennifer Ringley, a Washington resident who created it in 1997 to share her activities with Webwatchers.

Among the series' initial directors was the future filmmaker Tom Six,[2] who would become renowned for his body horror film The Human Centipede and its sequels.

George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which Big Brother is the all-seeing leader of a dystopian nation, has never been acknowledged by the producers.

The idea, said the suit, came out of meetings in summer 1999 between CBS executives and Voyeurdorm.com, a Tampa, Florida adult website of eight college-aged women.

[citation needed] Also in 2000, the production company Castaway, part-owned by Bob Geldof, sued Endemol for theft of format in a court in Amsterdam, saying the program was a rip-off of its Survivor-show (Expedition Robinson).

The wave under both names harkens back to the time that Veronica was a pirate station, broadcasting from international waters of the Netherlands.

This discussion included the moral panic in Sweden after the first contestant voted off Expedition Robinson killed himself; his family reportedly blaming the rejection he felt due to being unpopular with the public.

P. van Lange, a social psychologist at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam pointed out the similarity to the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971).

[3] Once Big Brother first started scoring high ratings, the debate shifted to what this implied about the character of the Dutch, and if the sexually explicit content and terms of abuse in the program suited early broadcasting.

In hindsight, it nonetheless became clear that some housemates (like first season's Bart en Ruud) suffered psychological problems akin to post traumatic stress disorder.

The proceeds of the hotel would donate to the foundation of Mappa Mondo, for children with a life-threatening illness from the Red Cross in Eindhoven.

The show suffered from poor viewing figures and the Red Cross was dissatisfied with the quality delivered, but after some adjustments, which inevitably led to censored TV coverage and often logos on the streams it was nevertheless maintained.