CBS's seemingly desperate tactic of offering a "bribe" to the remaining six contestants on Big Brother to leave the show produced only new embarrassment for the network Wednesday night as each of the contestants rejected the offer. Although initial reports indicated that the network would dangle $10,000 in front of the group, by airtime, the amount had escalated to $50,000. The plan was to replace one of the show's uninteresting guests with a livelier alternate. (The alternate, a woman named Beth, was shown in a film clip wearing a bikini and remarking, "I'm opinionated, and sometimes that's misconstrued as being a bitch." Today's (Thursday) USA Today commented: "Wednesday's one-hour episode was yet another example of how things continue to go wrong for the CBS show." Nevertheless, the ploy did seem to attract more viewers. The show tied NBC's Dateline for first place in the 8:00 p.m. hour with a 7.9 rating and a 13 share, according to Nielsen overnights. That was up from a 7.5/12 a week ago. Meanwhile, Jeff Oswald, a viewer who hired a private airplane company to fly banners over the Big Brother house urging contestants to leave, has told the Los Angeles Daily news that the pilot has been warned by CBS that it will be sued if it carried on. Oswald said that he wanted "to make sure CBS never lets this (another Big Brother series) happen again."

Source: Studio Briefing