CBS Renews ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ for Season 2

Celebrity Big Brother is returning next season, as CBS has reportedly renewed the spin-off for another round.

The reality series that arguably began it all made its first foray into celebrity guests this season, and it did well enough to warrant another run, according to Deadline. Celebrity Big Brother was a huge success this season, though next year it will be missing many of the key circumstances that it benefited from in its first attempt.

For one thing, Celebrity Big Brother became an unlikely source of political insight this past season. That was thanks to Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who went straight from her job at the White House to the Big Brother house.

Manigault wasn’t shy about sharing salacious stories from inside the nation’s capitol, and many people who weren’t normally interested in Big Brother tuned in to see what she would say. Her comments were uncharacteristically harsh on President Donald Trump, who helped her grow into a fully-fledged reality star starting on The Apprentice season 1.

“I was haunted by tweets every single day,” Manigualt whispered in one Celebrity Big Brother clip. She was teary-eyed as another contestant asked if the American people should be concerned about the Trump administration.

“It’s going to not be okay,” she said. She later added: “I felt like I was serving my country, not serving [Trump]. It was always about the country.”

Another factor was Celebrity Big Brother‘s competition — the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The show was on as counter-programming to NBC’s exclusive coverage of the world sporting event, and while the Olympics suffered some of the worst ratings in many years, Big Brother thrived.

While the reality TV phenomenon will be back next season, many hit shows surprisingly will not. It has been a brutal year for TV cancellations, with shows that were perceived as huge hits on the chopping block.

Five shows were canned by Fox in the course of this week — Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Last Man on Earth, The Mick, Lucifer and The Exorcist. More cuts could be on the way, and according to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, it can all be traced back to Fox’s deal with the NFL.

Back in January, Fox signed a five-year deal with the NFL for Thursday Night Football. The sporting event will occupy more than 30 hours of Fox’s airtime, leaving less room for many of the beloved shows that call the network home. In addition, Fox holds the rights to air Major League Baseball postseason games, including the World Series.

To top it all off, Fox is in a unique position among TV networks. Unlike ABC, NBC and CBS, Fox does not program the 10 p.m. hour, giving them less TV real estate to begin with.

It’s not all bad news, as Brooklyn Nine-Nine has already been saved thanks to fan outcry. The show will go on, now on NBC instead. It should be right at home there, as the show’s creator Michael Schur has a new comedy coming to the network this year and The Good Place returning for a third season.