Big Brother will make television history on Thursday, becoming the first primetime entertainment show in the United States to air 1,000 episodes. The CBS reality staple is hitting the milestone in its 28th season, a run that includes between 30 and 40 episodes in most seasons since the show airs multiple times weekly.
The achievement puts Big Brother well ahead of The Simpsons, which reached 800 episodes near the end of its 37th season in February, and fellow CBS reality mainstay Survivor, which has aired 727 episodes through its 50th season. Survivor premiered a few weeks before Big Brother in 2000.
The milestone arrives alongside a strong ratings summer for the show. Through Aug. 9 — the most recent week for which cross-platform data is available — Big Brother is averaging 5.21 million viewers per episode across a full week of multi-platform viewing, up 10 percent year to year and on pace for a second consecutive season of audience growth. Ratings among adults 25-54 have climbed 21 percent, and the 18-49 demographic is up 15 percent, part of a broader uptick in recent months for long-running reality franchises that also includes Survivor 50 and Dancing With the Stars.
Companion series Big Brother Unlocked, which airs Fridays, is also seeing gains, averaging 3.14 million cross-platform viewers over seven days, a 21 percent increase year to year.
Big Brother's 5.21 million cross-platform average ranks among the top 10 shows of the summer and comfortably tops Peacock's Love Island USA, which Nielsen data shows averaging 3.8 million viewers over seven days. In total viewing time, Big Brother is on pace to surpass 15 billion minutes for the season — including its round-the-clock live feeds — up sharply from 8.6 billion minutes last year. By comparison, Love Island USA's eighth season generated 10.87 billion minutes of watch time during its June and July run.
CBS is also reporting increased overlap between its two longest-running reality franchises. The network says 2.9 million Survivor viewers have watched at least a few minutes of Big Brother this season, up from 2.4 million last year, and 37 percent of Survivor 50 viewers who also watch Big Brother have seen more than half of the season's episodes so far. Two-time Survivor competitor Dee Valladares is currently part of the Big Brother cast, appearing this season alongside houseguests Taylor Brown and Melody Morris.
