If you’re waiting for a third season of “Celebrity Big Brother” in the coming weeks, you can forget it.
CBS has confirmed there are no plans for a Season 3 of the winter spinoff series.
The good news for fans?
The summer edition of the popular yet controversial reality TV show has been ordered and will debut in early June.
Also, host Julie Chen-Moonves, following her husband’s exit from CBS in disgrace, will be back after recently signing a new limited contract with CBS.
Could ratings be a factor for the no-go on “Celebrity BB” Season 3?
Very possibly, the entire franchise has been in decline for several seasons.
Last year, ratings for CBB averaged 4.40 million viewers, down from 5.04 million viewers in 2018.
The ratings decline for the celebrity edition reflects the most recent two regular summertime installments: Season 20 nabbed 5.41 million viewers in 2018 and Season 21 dropped to 4.38 million viewers in 2019.
The biggest factor facing BB’s producers for a third celebrity edition was finding the right mix of actors, singers, athletes and public figures.
If the past two seasons were full of “B-list” celebrities, you can only image what this season would have looked like.
“Big Brother” contestants have to be sequestered for long periods of time – longer than the senators in the impeachment trial – and finding popular celebrities with that kind of time for reality TV are few and far between.
As for Chen Moonves, she posted a cryptic tweet of a light grid last week that had fans talking.
— Julie Chen (@JulieChen) January 13, 2020
No one is sure the significance of the post, if any.
Last September, as the scandal involving her husband was fresh, Chen Moonves signed a one-season contract extension with CBS.
From what we know, this latest deal is much in the same vein, though multiple seasons are possible for the BB host.
For his part, Les Moonves is pursuing binding arbitration proceedings against CBS for the denial of his $120 million severance package.
An internal investigation at CBS that ended in December determined that the once-seemingly all-powerful exec actually was fired for cause due to the claims of sexual harassment and assault against him and his less-than-above-board reactions to said allegations.
That finding meant that Moonves was not eligible for the huge payout stipulated in his dense contract with CBS – and hence the ongoing closed-door legal sparring.
