Every year Big Brother contestants agree to be totally isolated from society for the duration of the season. This means they miss major news events. On rare occasions producers break the cardinal rule and reveal really important information, like the September 11 attacks, the presidential election results, and the COVID-19 outbreak (which ramped up during Big Brother bouts in Canada, Germany, Israel and Australia). Otherwise, contestants that stay in the game for months are completely unaware of how much the world changed since they left it.
To understand how much information gets delayed, this year I’m tracking major news stories that break while the Big Brother U.S. 24 houseguests are locked away. I’m adding them the spreadsheet below. It includes only highly significant headlines in Big Brother headlines, national news, world news, sports, entertainment and notable deaths. It also covers news that broke during the two-week pre-season sequester period. For this project, a “week” ends and begins on Wednesday evening. I plan to update it every Wednesday evening, with weekly reminders here.