Shilpa type racist row will be history on Big Brother

London (ANI): Big Brother bosses have drawn plans to pull off their 24-hour live coverage of the show in a bid to keep another incident of racism, similar to the one involving Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, from happening. The reality show's chiefs are set to edit the video in the next season of the show in January.

The decision-makers had received an overwhelming number of complaints in the fifth series of the show in 2007 concerning Shilpa, who had been subjected to bullying, allegedly with racism undertones, by other housemates Jade Goody, Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara.

"Fans will be royally short-changed. What used to be a reality show has turned into a farce. They've scrapped the 24-hour feed for many reasons but the main one is to get more control," the Sun quoted a show source as saying.

"It's now just an entertainment show where punters can see celebrities doing silly tasks. If the show isn't 24 hours then it's lost any cache it once had. Now it's more like a watered-down version of I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! than anything else," the source added. Channel 4, however, insisted that the call was made on the basis of public demand.

A spokesman said: "Last summer we found that rather than watching live streaming on red button, viewers much preferred watching more bite-size video clips from that day's action. "During the series, there were almost 19million clips viewed a 58 per cent increase. As they proved such a huge hit with fans, we've listened and responded to how viewers now consume Big Brother."