For Channel 4, with glamorous Davina MacCall as Friday-night presenter amid the screaming crowds gathered in London, there's no doubt that Big Brother is show business. In the US, it's packaged as news.

CBS, traditionally regarded as the most solid and reliable of the network organisations, has treated both Big Brother and the similar desert-island programme, Survivor, as news. The network's morning news programme, in particular, gives hours of interviews and panel discussions to the shows every week, and the news anchorwoman, Julie Chen, is also the voice of Big Brother. Local CBS stations have been known to lead their news bulletins with "news" from the programmes.

When a Big Brother housemate is evicted, and after his or her mandatory weekend of psychological counselling (oh, please), the first interview is with - you guessed it - Julie Chen on the CBS morning news.

Even CBS's more traditional news fare, the political conventions, were screened around episodes of the hit programmes.

CBS paid $20 million to Big Brother's Dutch inventors, Endemol, for the rights to the show. Both it and Survivor - bought from its Swedish originator - have repaid the investment. The finale of Survivor - in which America's answer to Nasty Nick, Richard Hatch, scooped the prize - attracted 51 million viewers (20 million more than the Oscars). The next instalment of Survivor, due to start on screens in January, will earn $112 million from eight key sponsors alone. Survivor even employs "product placement" to make extra money - so castaways only drink a particular brand of beer, for example.

But the network couldn't be more cynical than that Survivor winner: just after his victory became public, Richard Hatch told reporters he did not have an agent, wasn't even sure what the difference was between an agent and a manager, and planned to take his time to figure it all out. He also said he hoped to write a book someday. And while he was speaking, his agent was already out trying to sell the first chapter of his book.