Three weird internet rumors have been circulating about CBS reality shows. These are only rumors about public people until they are verified. For the sake of entertainment, we bring you:
1) The Story: BB2's winner Will met BB3's winner Lisa in acting classes and told her his exact strategy. Then he coached her about how to win the show. Since the CBS casting people and the assistant to CBS' VP of Alternative Programming hang out at Belly Bar, owned by Will's BB2 costar and writing partner, Mike 'Carri' Malin, Will was able to convince them to cast Lisa on the show. Afterwards, he sat back all summer of 2002 and watched her play with his techniques - and win $500,000 just like he did.
Since the rules didn't change between Big Brother 2 and Big Brother 3, this rumor was possible
Verification: At a conference at MIT this May, a CBS executive spoke and said , on videotape, that Will and Lisa knew each other before the show began and had taken acting classes together during the year between BB2 and BB3. He said it would have been impossible for Will to have had any say in the casting process for BB3.
2) Matthew von Ertfelda, the good-looking second place winner of Survivor Amazon, is a longtime friend of Julie Chen. Chen is the host of Big Brother and longtime girlfriend of CBS president Les Moonves - she was cited in the Associated Press as a newsworthy addition to the article about Les and Nancy Moonves current divorce proceedings. The rest of the rumor is that von Ertfelda also had some kind of connection to Belly Bar owned by Lonnie Moore and Mike 'Carri' Malin and that von Ertfelda had something to do with the 2001 redesign of the Big Brother house.
Verification: None. Nobody has asked Matthew about this one during web or TV interviews - and besides him, where would you start? If it happened to be true, is it fair for CBS president's girlfriend's buddy to go on Survivor and win $100,000 second prize? And what about the Belly Bar?
During one interview, Matthew mentioned he didn't get on the show through the usual means, but 'a friend' got him in touch with a freelance casting agent who was casting the show. Either that 'friend' was Julie Chen or maybe this information is meaningless regarding this rumor. Von Ertfelda is an interior designer specializing in kitchens - but the kitchen was redone between BB1 and BB2! Where was he during the winter of 2001?
3) CBS gives every contestant an IQ test (Stanford-Binet or WISC test) before they start the show. Then CBS tells each contestant this, privately, 'Don't tell anyone, but you have the highest IQ score of anyone on the show.' So each contestant goes into the game thinking they can naturally outsmart the others due to their high intelligence.
We've heard this from several show contestants during after-the-show chats. It seems this one is very likely. We hear CBS also gives every contestant endurance, physical, psychological, and emotional tests - so the producers know which people are most likely to win each challenge on these shows. Just like the von Ertfelda rumor, we have no verification from CBS about the false IQ revelations. But it is interesting to have some verification from CBS about Will and Lisa.
Can CBS act ethically when casting these game shows? We don't know. Entertainment value is one thing - ethics is another. There's another big rumor out there - but we will wait till BB4 is over to talk about that one.
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