Geo-Cultural Mindbender of the Week

Matt Welch | November 22, 2005

Two paragraphs that would have been utterly incomprehensible 16 years ago:

On Sunday [the] contestants of the Czech version of the Hungarian variation of the Big Brother reality show were kicked out of their camera-festooned villa in Prague. The Hungarian variety is called Valo Vilag and it was created by the German channel RTL, which stands for Radio Television Luxembourg. Compared with Big Brother, the Select Ones (as the name perhaps translates into English) is slightly more family-friendly as contestants are taken out to discos and whatnot and the atmosphere is less commie-like [so as] not to scare the population of nations who had actually experienced it.

So Sunday morning, five remaining select Czechs were kicked out as the television station was late with rent for their villa lot. To protect their advertising revenues from the show, the TV station decided to ship the contestants over to Bratislava where the Slovak version of the Hungarian variation is currently airing. And on Monday night, the Czech and Slovak versions joined in the first big live Czech/Slovak media project since the federation of the two states went belly up in 1993 -- under Hungarian/German supervision.

Whole thing here; I edited in some capitalization and italics.

Comments

|11.22.05 @ 2:43PM|#

It's plenty incomprehensible now.

Ed|11.22.05 @ 2:49PM|#

OK, now it's official: everything in the world is newsworthy.

Sandy|11.22.05 @ 2:54PM|#

Sigh. The utter cross-border banality is pretty much the goal of every post-transition country in the area. It's not unlike the vision I talked with central Europeans about ten or more years ago.

Except the part about calling something like Big Brother a reality show.

|11.22.05 @ 3:11PM|#

B.P. --

I'll say.

Mike|11.22.05 @ 4:27PM|#

Please edit to note that it is all based on the original Dutch version, called Big Brother, which translates into English as Big Brother. That should clear up some of the confusion.

|11.23.05 @ 1:19PM|#

Matt laid an egg.

Larry A|11.23.05 @ 2:02PM|#

Maybe I've been around a little longer. I remember when the only interaction between said countries involved explosives and projectiles.

"It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small world after all.
It's a small, small world."

Matt Welch|11.23.05 @ 2:15PM|#

Larry -- I think you mean "To je maly, maly svet."