Julie Chen Moonves has been the host of Big Brother since its first season back in the summer of 2000. Not many shows are still around from the pre-9/11 era, but Big Brother had two seasons on the air before the horrible tragedy. According to Entertainment Weekly, Chen Moonves was not the happiest camper in those early seasons, revealing that she actually thought she was going to get fired before the end of the first season.
“I originally turned down the job,” Chen Moonves said. “I was forced to take it, so I took it. I didn’t know what I was in for…I assumed it was going to be bigger than Survivor – just in a house with air conditioning.” Survivor had premiered the month before and instantly became a monster hit.
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At the time, Chen Moonves was still fresh at CBS and was a former Dayton, Ohio, news anchor who was the CBS Early Show news reader after joining the national network. The success of Survivor helped convince her to go along with the Big Brother hosting gig, too, but things did not go as planned.
“I thought, ‘Ooh, this is going to really change the face of television,’” Chen Moonves told Entertainment Weekly. “Only to receive the worst reviews from every angle on season 1. TV critics hated the concept of the show. They hated the lighting. They hated the IKEA-looking furniture. They hated the house, they hated everything.
“Externally, people hated me. Critics internally – people at CBS News – wanted me fired from the news division,” Chen Moonves added. She also noted that she really felt her job was on the line when 60 Minutes’ resident Curmudgeon spoke out about the show and Chen Moonves.
“I thought I was going to lose my job doing morning news because Andy Rooney spoke out publicly against me when I hosted Big Brother,” Chen Moonves said. “He was like, ‘How dare she blur the lines between news and entertainment? She should immediately be fired from the news division and shipped off to the west coast and permanently put in the entertainment division if that’s what she wants to do.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, Andy Rooney’s going to have me fired!’”
Chen Moonves expanded upon her first season in the chat with Entertainment Weekly, also hitting upon her expectations if the show was canceled in its first season. Twenty-five seasons later, that all seems like an old wound that has since been healed. “Arnold and Allison [Grodner] turned the show upside down and made it what it is today,” Chen Moonves adds. “If it wasn’t for Arnold and Allison, I honestly don’t think we would be here talking about the 25th season.”
