Harvest of shame(ful)
-- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/10/2000
The CBS eye that once represented the foresight of a Paley or the penetrating gaze of a Murrow now belongs to a peeping Tom. We are speaking here chiefly about the CBS Web site, which allows viewers to track Big Brother's participants like lab rats in a video maze, or flies caught in a Web of cameras.
What we saw on the Web site, however, was a lot of people brushing their teeth and cleaning the pool and talking about how powerful the toilet is (we wonder if there is a metaphor there). We also heard some language that CBS had at one point suggested would not be on the Web site or the TV show. We had wondered how it would be possible for the network or producers to keep unscripted people from exercising their vocabularies in video streamed live on the Web. Of course, they can't.
As we clicked through CBS' Web site to get to the Big Brother real-time video, there was that famous eye leading us to our destination, which wound up being close-ups of people spitting in the sink. We were kind of surprised the Web cams didn't follow the contents down the drain. We guess it's only a matter of time.
