People who write off Big Brother as regrettable and low-brow are "cultural snobs" who have failed to understand the show's significance, a leading pop culture critic says.
Over eight years, Big Brother established unscripted drama as a staple television genre and engaged with its audience across a range of new media platforms, University of Queensland academic Jason Sternberg said.
"I think a lot of that sort of high-minded reaction about the show being "low-brow" and being cheap and nasty, I think a lot of that is actually cultural snobbery," Dr Sternberg said.
"Big Brother was not [just] a television show. It was legitimately a cultural phenomenon. It was a multi-platform, multi-media event."
The long-running reality show ended on Monday, with grandmother Terri, the show's oldest-ever contestant, taking home $250,000 cash.
Channel 10 has decided not to run the program again, although its producer, Endemol Southern Star, is shopping the concept around to other networks.
Dr Sternberg said it was fair to draw comparisons between Big Brother's average Joe stars and the internet celebrities spawned through YouTube, MySpace and a multitude of DIY blogs.
"I think the two are connected, they're versions on the same theme," he said.
"Reality television still requires being part of the system. You've still got to go through the participation process. On the web you bypass the whole system."
"But there's that drive for people to be able to speak back to the media and interact with the media."
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