Big Brother 1 ran in the summer of 2000 and barely resembles the game the show became. There was no Head of Household, no Power of Veto and no jury. The house did not vote anybody out. Every House Guest privately named two people they wanted gone, whoever drew the most names was “marked for banishment,” and then the public phoned in at 99 cents a call to decide which of the marked ones actually left. Eddie won it, and the audience — not a jury — picked him.
Winner: Eddie 59% of the public vote · $500,000
Runner-up: Josh $100,000
Third place: Curtis $50,000
Decided by: a single live public vote among all three finalists
Jury: None · no season since has been decided this way
Who won Big Brother 1?
Eddie won Big Brother 1 on 29 September 2000 with 59% of the public vote, taking $500,000. He was 21, a broadcast journalism student, and a cancer survivor who had lost his left leg to the disease at eleven. Reporting the day after the finale described him as the sympathetic favourite and noted that nearly every banished House Guest had predicted he would win.
His own reaction, on air: “I am awestruck. I did not expect to win. My heart is pumping like you wouldn’t believe.”
Josh finished second and Curtis third. The figures usually given for the rest of the vote are 27% to Josh and 14% to Curtis; those two numbers are widely reported and internally consistent, but they do not trace back to a contemporary wire report as cleanly as Eddie’s 59% does.
- Aired: 5 July to 29 September 2000 on CBS.
- Move-in: 4 July 2000 — Day 1, a day before the broadcast premiere.
- House Guests: 10, all entering on Day 1. Nobody arrived late.
- Length: 87 days.
- Prize structure: $500,000 / $100,000 / $50,000 — the only three-tier prize in the franchise’s US history.
- The house: 28 cameras and 60 microphones.
- Eliminations: seven banishments, all decided by public telephone vote.
How did Big Brother 1 actually work?
Almost none of it survived into the modern game, so the rest of the season only makes sense once this does.
Nobody was Head of Household
There was no Head of Household competition and no Head of Household at all. Competitions did happen — a Sumo tournament, quizzes, puzzles, fitness challenges — but with no crown and no veto to play for, what they were actually worth in the game is not clear from anything the season itself says. Do not assume winning one made anybody safe. Nothing supports that.
There was no veto
The Power of Veto did not exist in 2000 and did not exist in 2001 either. It arrived mid-season in Big Brother 3, three summers later.
Everybody nominated, in secret
The show explained its own rule on Day 10: every House Guest had to choose two others for banishment, nobody could choose themselves, and discussing your own nominations with the house was contractually forbidden. The names were tallied and whoever sat at the top of that tally was marked.
The marked group was not a fixed size. Everyone tied at the top got marked, so it could be two people, three, four — and twice it was very nearly the whole house. One round marked six of the seven remaining House Guests. The final round marked all four. This is the single biggest difference from the modern block and the thing most retellings of the season get wrong.
The audience did the evicting
The house never voted anyone out. Once the marked group was set, viewers called 1-900-740-1000 at 99 cents a call and chose which of them was banished. The house decided who was at risk; the public alone decided who went home. No season since has worked this way.
It was called banishment, not eviction
“Eviction” is a Big Brother 2 word. In 2000 the show said banishment, and it said it consistently — across the whole run of the season’s official site the word “banish” appears hundreds of times and “evict” does not appear at all. The contestants were “House Guests,” two words, capitalised.
There was no jury, and the finale had three people in it
Banished House Guests went home and that was the end of their involvement. They did not sit on a jury, because there was no jury. At the end three House Guests remained, each gave a short statement to the camera, and the public voted once — a single vote across all three at the same time, not an elimination followed by a head-to-head. It is the only US season ever decided that way.
Who was in the Big Brother 1 cast?
Ten House Guests, all in on Day 1. Nobody quit, nobody was expelled, and nobody left except by being banished — which makes Big Brother 1 unusual on its own.
- Eddie — broadcast journalism student, Manhasset, New York. Winner.
- Josh — civil engineering student, living in Santa Maria, California. Runner-up.
- Curtis — attorney, Fullerton, California. Third.
- Jamie — sales rep and a former Miss Washington USA, San Rafael, California.
- George — roofing contractor, Rockford, Illinois. Known all season as Chicken George.
- Cassandra — United Nations staffer, Havre de Grace, Maryland.
- Brittany — sales rep, Robinsdale, Minnesota.
- Karen — mayor’s assistant, Quincy, Illinois.
- Jordan — student, Roanoke, Virginia.
- William — youth counsellor, Philadelphia. Went by Mega.
An eleventh arrival, on Day 36, was a pug called Chiquita, sent in as a twist. She was playfully “banished” the same night Jamie was and adopted afterwards by the show’s story editor.
Big Brother 1 round by round
Seven rounds, seven banishments, then a three-way finale.
Round 1 · William banishedDay 16 · 19 July
William and Jordan. William topped the first tally the house ever produced, and comfortably.
William, the first House Guest ever voted out by an audience in the US franchise.
He told Julie Chen: “Being voted out number one is a compliment.”
Round 2 · Jordan banishedDay 29 · 1 August
Jordan and Curtis. Curtis drew the most names this round and survived the public vote anyway.
Jordan — on her own birthday.
She disputed her edit in an exit interview on Letterman.
Round 3 · Karen banishedDay 43 · 15 August
Josh, Cassandra and Karen — the first three-way mark of the season.
Karen.
She had said a fortnight earlier that she hoped to be nominated. She was homesick and intended to end her marriage once she was out.
Round 4 · Brittany banishedDay 57 · 29 August · six-way tie
Brittany, Cassandra, Curtis, Eddie, George and Josh — everyone except Jamie, after a six-way tie at the top of the tally.
Brittany.
George’s wife organised a phone-bank push back home in Rockford, Illinois, with a local radio station and a restaurant, urging people to vote against Brittany.
Round 5 · Cassandra banishedDay 71 · 12 September
Cassandra, Curtis and Eddie, tied at the top.
Cassandra. She had formally asked to leave on Day 55 and been refused — “there’s no dignity in leaving,” she was told.
The house was offered $50,000 to skip this round’s nominations entirely. They turned it down.
Round 6 · George banishedDay 78 · 19 September · unanimous
Curtis, Eddie, George and Jamie — everyone but Josh. Every remaining House Guest named George. Nobody else in the season was named unanimously.
George, the sixth out.
A month of aeroplane banners had been flying over the house attacking him by name. See below.
Round 7 · Jamie banishedDay 85 · 26 September · everyone marked
All four — Curtis, Eddie, Jamie and Josh tied exactly, so the whole remaining house went up.
Jamie. Chiquita the pug was sent out the same night.
Finale · Eddie winsDay 87 · 29 September
Curtis, Eddie and Josh. Each gave a short statement, then the public voted once across all three.
Eddie first with 59%, Josh second, Curtis third.
$500,000, $100,000 and $50,000 — three cheques, which has never happened again.
The Chicken George banner campaign
For roughly a month, from late August into September, somebody paid for aeroplanes to fly banners over the Big Brother house attacking George. This is the most misremembered story of the season, so it is worth getting the details right.
The banners were real, sustained and specific. One read “It’s worse than you think. Get out now.” Another: “JOSH KNOWS WHY WE FLY ANTI-GEORGE BANNERS.” A third answered the question everyone in the house was asking — “WAKE THE F UP — ANTI-GEORGE BANNERS TRUE — FANS, NOT CBS.”
That last one matters. The banners identified themselves as fan-funded, and production denied responsibility on tape — “we cannot control another person’s business; the friendly skies above the house are out of the show’s provenance.” The version of this story that says CBS was behind it, or that George’s family was campaigning to have more popular House Guests removed, does not hold up against what the season itself recorded.
Whoever paid for them was never identified. Josh made comments on camera that suggested he knew more about it than he was saying, tying the banners to a woman who spent several weeks shouting messages to the house through a megaphone from outside the fence — she was never identified either.
And George was not the only target. Pro-Eddie and anti-Jamie banners flew in the season’s final weeks too. Eddie, seeing one go up in his favour, called down: “Sorry I cost you three hundred bones to get that up.” Strangers spending real money to steer a television vote was not a one-off in this season. It was a feature of it.
Was Big Brother 1 a flop?
Less simply than it is usually told. The premiere pulled a very large audience, the middle of the season sagged badly, and the finale recovered. Season 1’s overall average is generally reckoned to be the highest any US season has managed — and it was still treated at the time as a disappointment, because CBS was simultaneously running Survivor and watching it become a phenomenon.
What is not in doubt is how the network responded. On 7 September 2000, with about three weeks left to run, Julie Chen offered the six remaining House Guests escalating sums of cash — rising to $50,000 between them — to walk out voluntarily. A replacement contestant was standing by in case anyone took it. All six refused.
Critics at the time were not gentle either. The complaints on record are specific: that paying 99 cents to vote rewarded whoever provoked the strongest reaction rather than measuring real sentiment, that letting Karen discuss the end of her marriage on air was an ethical failure, and that the production values were thin.
Why Big Brother 2 changed everything
The format CBS imported for Season 1 came over from the Netherlands essentially untouched. It did not fit, and the reason it did not fit is the same one critics identified while the season was still airing: when the audience does the evicting, the audience removes the difficult people first. Every divisive House Guest goes early, and what is left gets progressively less watchable.
The show’s long-running executive producer put it that way herself, looking back — the most interesting people were being voted out by America because they were seen as troublemakers. Big Brother 2, the following summer, rebuilt the game around fixing exactly that.
- Head of Household — introduced in Big Brother 2. Did not exist in Season 1.
- Who nominates — Season 1: everybody, privately. Big Brother 2 onward: the Head of Household alone, and only two people.
- Who evicts — Season 1: the viewing public, by paid phone vote. Big Brother 2 onward: the house.
- The jury — Season 1 had none. Big Brother 2 introduced one.
- The veto — neither season had it. It arrived mid-way through Big Brother 3.
- The final vote — Season 1: the public chose between three. Big Brother 2 onward: a jury chooses between two.
Every recognisable bone of the modern game arrived in the space of one off-season.
There was no Mega alliance
This comes up often enough to be worth stating plainly. “Mega” was William’s own nickname — he went by it from the day he walked in, and the season’s coverage used it to mean him, one person, every single time. It was never the name of a group, a bloc or an alliance.
More broadly, no formal alliance in the modern sense can be verified for this season at all. House Guests were plainly conscious of the idea — Jamie rejected it outright on Day 26, comparing it to high-school peer pressure, and Cassandra told Curtis on Day 37 that “obviously there’s a family” she felt shut out of. But nobody ever named who was in it, and the round-by-round nomination record shows shifting targets rather than a bloc voting together. The word “alliance” barely appears in the season’s own coverage.