‘Big Brother’ Producer Explains Season 20 App Store Twist

Big Brother is rolling out a new twist for its landmark season, and it is guaranteed to make the Season 20 houseguests social media superstars. Host Julie Chen hinted at the twist earlier this month, but now Big Brother executive producer Allison Grodner is giving all the details on the new twist that will have America involved in changing this summer’s BB20 game.

Grodner told Entertainment Weekly that the new twist, called BB App Store, is “sort of a spin” on the past viewer-led twist, America’s Choice. Grodner explained the Big Brother App Store twist to EW:

“In this case, people will go online and they complete a survey with questions about the houseguests that will result in some houseguests trending the most and some houseguests trending the least. And, in that case, the houseguests will go one at a time into the App Store, similar to last year, but instead of people voting people to have certain powers, the people that are trending the most based on the survey will have access to choose certain powers. So it’s a little different.”

The Big Brother producer acknowledged that this new twist will give the houseguests some outside information that past players never had before, as they will get to see which of their housemates are popular based on viewer responses to their actions.

“They will get that feedback depending on whether they were given a power or a punishment in the App Store,” Grodner explained.

Entertainment Weekly previously revealed that the BB App Store will roll out on July 1, a few days after the Big Brother premiere. The earlier description of the twist revealed that the special app will give America “the chance to get the Houseguests trending, resulting in power apps or punishments that could crash their game.”

A Big Brother promo released earlier this month teased that the new houseguests could get “hacked” this summer. In the promo, host Julie Chen warned, “The houseguests better start trending or their game could crash.” TV Guide confirmed that the social media spin is not the main twist for Big Brother Season 20, which takes place in a house modeled after tech campuses from around the globe.

Last summer’s Big Brother season featured the Den of Temptation twist, which unleashed unpleasant consequences for the rest of the houseguests when a greedy roommate gave in to a tempting offer. It sounds like the BB App Store will also yield some unpredictable punishments for the Season 20 houseguests.

Big Brother Season 20 premieres Wednesday, June 27, at 8/7c on CBS.