VirGiN MeDiA To BaCk BiG BroThEr...

Virgin Media has been confirmed as the sponsor of Big Brother 8 with the company's mobile arm to be the main service promoted.

Virgin Media has signed on for the main summer series - as revealed by MediaGuardian.co.uk - but not next year's Celebrity Big Brother version.

Channel 4 has not yet announced if there will be a Celebrity Big Brother in 2008. However, it is understood that Virgin Media will be given first refusal on extending the sponsorship if the trouble-laden show runs without a hitch this summer.

"Of course we had worries [about this year's Celebrity Big Brother], we would have been foolhardy if we didn't," said James Kydd, the managing director of marketing at Virgin Media.

"We spent a lot of time talking to Channel 4 about how they were sorting out their internal processes to make sure there wouldn't be any sort of escalation again. But Big Brother is always controversial, it is the nature of the beast. We just wanted to be reassured that there wouldn't be a situation that got out of control again."

Carphone Warehouse pulled out of its £2.5m a year sponsorship of Big Brother following the Shilpa Shetty racism row in January.

The Big Brother sponsorship package includes branding and advertising opportunities across TV, video-on-demand, online, radio and mobile.

"The sponsorship will be split between our mobile and media services," added Mr Kydd. "What Big Brother does is give a fantastic opportunity to bring to life quadplay in action and the core 16-34 demographic BB reaches is a bullseye for mobile. Virgin Mobile will be the lead sponsor but we will absolutely push Virgin Media messaging."

My ComMentS...
I think that its really conterversial for virgin to support big brother since carphone warehouse dropped out as they felt that them sponsoring Big brother would ruin their reputation, since they adgree with the public that Jade Goody was being racist. It will bring a great deal of profit to the company.. but how will the public respond to this?