Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Celebrity Big Brother Season 3 premiere. Read at your own risk!
Celebrity Big Brother is back for Season 3, and as far as premieres go, this was a pretty good one. The celebrity cast looks ready to play, even the ones that don’t necessarily know how to play, and we got a Head Of Household competition where everyone seemed willing and ready to be the first person to send another houseguest home. In the end, UFC fighter Miesha Tate got the privilege of the season’s first HOH, and dedicated fans rushed to the live feeds in hopes of finding out who she intended to send home.
Unfortunately, those who went to the Celebrity Big Brother live feeds weren’t met with footage of the houseguests chilling in the house. Instead, they saw the logo image for the show and a message stating that there’s a delay in the live feed premiere, and there will be an update on Friday. Check it out below, and continue on for speculation on what this means.
Veteran Big Brother fans are used to not knowing exactly what time feeds might turn on at the start of a season or when they’ll restart when the feeds randomly drop (but you can get tips on all that here). What they aren’t used to is a message like this, which is pretty significant at the time of writing. Essentially, viewers could possibly have zero live feed access until at least one houseguest is already eliminated, which isn’t ideal. This is especially true when the cast has been moved in for days already, so there’s no telling what fans missed.
So, why exactly did this happen? Its possible technical difficulties are the cause, and that’s not entirely an uncommon phenomenon. Live television has its share of issues, and live feeds are no exception. With that said, it’s somewhat hard to believe every camera and microphone in the house is out of commission and that it’d be impossible to continue if even a dozen of them were inoperable. As I said, technical difficulties are certainly a possibility but I’m not sure that warrants a two-day delay in feeds.
Another possibility is house drama, which is always a given in Big Brother. It’s possible some massive event occurred (possibly one that warranted expulsion), and the production team just felt it better to shut the feeds down entirely rather than allow its audience a front-row seat to whatever meltdown may occur. This is fairly standard procedure, though again, two days is a long time for feeds to be down (though feeds were down in Season 23 early on for a long time overall) when they were expected on the premiere.
A third possibility is that one of the Houseguests tested positive for COVID (which happened in Season 23) or that the cast was exposed by a member of the crew. A direct exposure would absolutely complicate the game and might force the crew to quarantine the cast in different rooms if not remove them all from the house to do a deep clean. In either case, neither scenario would make for good feeds, which might explain the delay.
Whatever the case might be, this is certainly a strange situation for Celebrity Big Brother. Hopefully, things get resolved soon, and this isn’t an issue that plagues the rest of the season. In the meantime, at least we have two more episodes to watch this week!
Celebrity Big Brother has a new episode on CBS on Thursday, February 3 at 9:00 p.m. ET. The live feeds may not be available, and the notice only promises "an update" on Friday, but at least there are plenty of other great Paramount+ shows to watch in the meantime!
