Their 16th Minute

When word of the event reached me, one question kept echoing through my mind: Who would go? Who would pay good money--in some instances exceeding the cost of tickets to a Broadway show--to attend a reunion of “Big Brother,” the CBS series derided by TV critics through much of the summer?

While “Survivor” has achieved the status of pop-culture phenomenon, “Big Brother” remains an odd afterthought--the other staged, avant-garde premise CBS introduced, a Dutch import in which 10 people were sequestered in a house (the winners for nearly three months) and their actions monitored by cameras and microphones 24 hours a day.

Under constant surveillance, many likened the contestants confined for our amusement to lab rats, and worse yet, boring ones at that. Even CBS, seeking to explain the show’s modest (though not disastrous) ratings, has implied as much, abandoning the cast by claiming “Big Brother’s” results stemmed in part from mistakes in who was chosen. Executives thus insist a second version being planned for this summer will be better if, among other things, the network does a better job “casting” its inmates.

So here they were Monday night, six of the “Big Brother” alumni, at an event sponsored by the Seminar Center almost six months after the show’s conclusion. The minimum admission: $40. For $65, a nonmember (it’s $29.95 to join the Seminar Center) could get “VIP seating,” which accounted for every row except a few in the back. Members willing to part with $115, meanwhile, were treated to a “private reception,” with snacks (some flat soda and carrot sticks) as well as an “up-close Q&A; and autograph session.”

All told, fewer than two dozen people appeared to shell out the big money, with roughly 100 there in all. The Seminar Center Program Director Paul Scott Adamo said he was not disappointed by the turnout, though he noted the most popular sessions--often those involving “spiritual mediums,” such as TV psychic Kenny Kingston--can draw well over 1,000.

“It’s an unusual event,” he said.

That it was. For starters, the seminar, whose location was kept secret to everyone but those registered, was held in a basement ballroom at Temple Israel of New York--a rather appropriate venue, given that people came not so much to reminisce about a TV show as worship those involved.

For the participants, it was not about money. Based on attendance, the cast members on hand--grand-prize winner Eddie McGee, Curtis Kin, Cassandra Waldon, Brittany Petros, Will Mega and George Boswell--will pocket no more than a few hundred dollars each.

Rather, it seemed merely another opportunity to extend their grasp of fame a few more hours--to be, in a sense, Madonna for a night. Some have tried to parlay their experience into full-fledged entertainment careers, not surprisingly, with marginal success. The lure of Hollywood is so strong that even Mega, who briefly spurred controversy during the show because of his ties to the New Black Panther Party, has taken to billing himself as an “actorvist.”

*

At this point, they remain people whose most marketable talent, from a television standpoint, was their willingness to subject themselves to isolation from friends and family in pursuit of fame and a pot of money. (Many sitcom writers do this too, though they get to sleep in their own beds at night if they choose.)

To the “Big Brother” contestants, however, adulation is invariably mixed with indignities, down to the fact that the event’s moderator had clearly never seen the show. McGee finally told her politely, after a second or third recitation regarding the program’s particulars, “Miss, these people are fans of the show. I think they know the statistics.”

Indeed they did. And the attendees were, in their own way, far more interesting than those on stage--not only for who they were, but who they weren’t. Yes, there were some who looked as if they were plucked from the most embarrassing regions of a “Star Trek” convention, but the crowd was nothing if not eclectic: young and middle-aged (two seniors, on hand initially, soon left), white and black, short and tall, obese and model-thin.

They lined up to get autographs and snap pictures. “I’m hoping to meet some like-minded people,” one middle-aged woman was overheard to say, almost sheepishly. “Most of my friends don’t really understand.”

Technology, of course, is helping change the dynamics of being a “fan,” in its most ardent sense. People have long quietly carried torches for canceled TV shows, but thanks to the Internet, viewers from all over the country--indeed, the world--are able to keep the fire burning, or perhaps more accurately, the spark flickering.

In just the last few weeks, e-mails have arrived from fans seeking to “save” ABC’s modestly rated drama “Once and Again”; from a teenage girl spearheading a campaign on behalf of the WB’s “Gilmore Girls”; even a group still chatting away regarding the merits of “Prey,” a science-fiction series ABC dropped several years ago.

Although there are some people with addictive personalities who stray compulsively from one fan preoccupation to another, many of these people say the same thing--that they aren’t normally the kind who becomes obsessed about a television show, that their activism is new and exciting to them, that something about this particular show spoke to them.

*

Granted, “Big Brother” is a more unlikely candidate than most for such lingering ardor. At one point, the contestants rebelled against the producers, threatening to quit. Both the “house guests” and TV critics complained that the show kept violating its own elaborate rules, injecting stunts into the mix in a desperate effort to make the show--which even Eddie acknowledged must have been “boring” to watch--more interesting.

“I felt the show was sinking to a level that was frankly beneath all of us,” Cassandra told the audience Monday, adding later, “You cease to have ‘reality’ television when they’re telling you what to say.”

“ ‘Reality TV’ is when you’re being filmed, and you do not know you’re being filmed. . . . Rodney King is ‘reality TV,’ ” Mega added, doing a pretty fair job, without trying, of explaining why The Times has dropped the “reality” designation in favor of calling such shows staged, unscripted entertainment.

Brittany seemed to generate the most enthusiasm as she held court at Monday’s event, yet even she admitted having contemplated suing CBS regarding the circumstances surrounding her ouster from the show--with some contending, as has the first “Survivor’s” Stacey Stillman, that the outcome was in essence rigged.

In keeping with “Big Brother’s” lack of drama, she ultimately thought better of it. “I was lucky to get picked,” she said. “They gave me a gift. They let me go on the show.”

It was tempting to poll those in the audience Monday about why they were there, to ask what could have motivated them to come out on a chilly night and, in some cases, sit for close to four hours listening to the contestants.

Somehow, though, it felt best to leave them in their anonymity--to not invade this private passion for a show that would no doubt warrant puzzled looks from many neighbors and co-workers. As that woman said, it’s hard to understand.

Crazy as it sounds, though, an inconsequential television show can become far more than that. Not just to those who take part, but people you could pass on a busy street without notice--anonymous souls to whom a night reminiscing about “Big Brother” is as precious as seeing “The Lion King,” and a gift that, for whatever reason, keeps on giving.

*

Brian Lowry’s column appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.