Reality Enquirer

In my readings I have found a few people who had no idea who BB5 BBQ was. So what - are these people living in caves and watching black and white televisions?

BB5BBQ is the invention of Spamgirl, a web denizen who has frequented many sites over the years - including TV Clubhouse and Elites TV; created the infamous Banish Krista site during BB2; and has been active in one way or another with Big Brother since its inception.

BB5BBQ is the ongoing expression of the original site BB3BBQ which transformed into BB4BBQ last year. It is known for its ability to get breaking news on Big Brother, and for its barbequeing of the housemates. There has been some competition in the past by other sites, but I don't believe anyone gets the scoop better, faster, and more consistently than BB5BBQ.

Now I do have a few complaints. With the original success, the site tried (and I am not sure how successfully) to branch out to other reality shows. And now I see they have their own message board. Personally I think this dilutes the real power of the site - a central place on their home page to get the breaking news about Big Brother, unencumbered by message board politics and digressions on other shows.

But having said that, it is still a must stop site for any fanatical Big Brother watcher. Visit it and bookmark it today!

In all fairness, I thought this response to my Hamster Time article should be printed

Overg here again, an admin on Hamster Time. I saw your write-up about our little site, and since I've seen the same "Who is Hamster Time?" question pop up on other sites, I thought I'd give you a little more background.

Hamster Time was started after Television Without Pity stopped carrying live feed recaps. People were refreshing so often that it was crashing their already taxed servers. So they shut down the recaps, and Hamster Time was born to fill the void. Most of the people who recapped on TWoP followed us over, and we've picked up a lot of loyal readers and recappers since then. So anyway, anyone familiar with TWoP will probably recognize a lot of its influence in Hamster Time.

We don't claim or want to be another Clubhouse or Joker's . . . anyone looking for straight up informative recaps would be better off with those sites. We prefer to allow our recappers a little more leeway with the "facts", and encourage them to express their opinions of the houseguests while they're transcribing the goings on in the BB house. Our basic motto is "better to be funny than accurate." Oh, and as to our numbers, we'll probably average between 15,000 and 30,000 hits and well over 200 posts per day during the season, depending upon how entertaining the show is.

Anyway, thanks for the poll and the feature. We like to think that we provide an entertaining alternative to some of the more well known recapping sites, and it's extremely gratifying to see our readers agree.

That is the question I have been getting (and reading) since Hamster Time has been topping our Best BB Site poll.

Hamster Time at p200.ezboard.com/bbb3livefeeds is one of the ubiquitous EZBoard forums that are so popular - mostly because they are easy to set up and are ostensibly free. Some of these boards become very popular, and Hamster Time seems to be one of those.

Boasting over 750 registered member, the site gets about 3,000 visits per day, and averages over 54 posts/day. Of course I am sure this is a total average, and both numbers go up significantly during the Big Brother season.

This is a typical Big Brother board - Live Feed Recaps, General BB Discussion, BB Live Show Recaps and the ancillary forums that always seem to pop up to handle non-Big Brother talk.

The recaps are of the type TV Clubhouse pioneered - linear and lengthy (opposed to the threaded/short) and are quite good. I recognize at least one of the posters - Raptorgirl75 - but most of the names are new to me.

One thing they do have is a large and apparently loyal member base. Why else would they top the poll?

This has got to be the question the webmaster at Big Brother Hardcore must be asking himself.

The site, another Big Brother site offering live feeds and discussion, seems to be stalled in the starting gate. The idea looks good - a place for people who like Big Brother and only Big Brother. It has a news front page, an updates board, and a discussion board. What it doesn't seem to have is posters.

I like the site - the boards are reminiscent of the old BB Insider (may it rest in peace), Keith X's BB Chatter, and the old Jokers Updates before the current administration took over. It is clean, has no advertising (at least not yet), and seems fast. What I really like is that in the discussion pages if a message has no text in it, it shows up without a link so you don't waste time opening it to see what is there.

I only count 4 or 5 people posting, including the webmaster Jakers. And those aren't posting very much.

This site looks ripe for a takeover by a group of posters who want their own home. Or another haven for disgruntled posters at other site - we will have to see if it turns in to one of those "hate" sites that seem to pop up every year around this time (well actually about a month or two in to the Big Brother season).

So good luck Big Brother Hardcore - it looks like you will need it.

Back by popular demand are the Alexa Ranking stats.

Remember these are based on Alexa.com and the use of their toolbar.

Sites that do not own their domain (such as TV Clubhouse which is located at tvclubhouse.bomis.com, and EZBoard sites) can not be listed in the rankings.

I will update these periodically!