Oh so close! The new CBS program Big Brother comes within a whisker of unseating Pokemon at #1 in this week's Lycos 50.
Big Brother is suddenly a big hit online. The new CBS show -- in which 10 nutty volunteers live in a custom-built house with 28 cameras, 60 microphones, and 24 hour surveillance -- unleashed a flood of user queries. Many users asked for bigbrother.com, which makes us think they're attracted by the 24-hour webcams available at the official website.
How many people will tune in at 2:00 am to watch 10 strangers snooze? The answer, it seems: a lot.
Big Brother's big adventure moved that other wacky "real life" series, Survivor, down to #13. Old favorite Who Wants To Be a Millionaire is far out of the running, drawing less than 10% of the user searches of Survivor and less than 5% of Big Brother.
Pokemon is also a "survivor," sticking at #1 for the 28th straight week. But Big Brother came closer to unseating the little monsters than anyone since Christmas. It seems only a matter of weeks now before we have a new champion. (Admit it: you're rooting for Pokemon to take a dive.)
Other key points from this week's Lycos 50:
WIMBEL-WHAT? The annual tennis tournament at Wimbledon drew heavy interest this week, rising to an impressive #14. But spelling was a problem: Wimbeldon, Wimbldon, Wimbleton, and Wimbledom all got dozens of queries this week.
Among individual players (besides #18 Anna Kournikova, we mean) the Williams sisters and Andre Agassi made strong showings. But the big surprise was Jelena Dokic, the Serbian 17-year-old who made it to the Wimbledon semifinals before losing to Lindsay Davenport. Dokic didn't reach the Lycos 50 but she got thousands of searches -- helped in part, perhaps, by the antics of her wacky father.
HOW DO I BLOW OFF A FINGER? Odd but true: while the Fourth of July (#32) was dropping 6 places last week, fireworks rose 12 places to #16. (Guess we know where our Independence Day priorities lie...) Safety experts would not be reassured by some of the queries we saw this week: homemade fireworks, illegal fireworks, and how to make firecrackers got hundreds of user searches.
WHAT THE HECK IS... Tenchi Muyo??? It's yet another anime TV show from Japan. This one has magic swords, galactic samurai, three gems of great power, big-eyed princesses and-- oh, wait, every anime show has those. (Whatever happened to battling cats and mice?)
For a quick text introduction try this Tenchi Muyo page. Or listen to the show's disco-style opening theme from Tenchi Muyo World.
SHORT SUBJECTS: Another big week for sports on the Lycos 50 as the Tour de France (#21) joins Wimbledon, golf (#19), baseball (#28), Nascar (#30) and skateboarding (#34) on our list... the friendly armada known as The Tall Ships (AKA Operation Sail 2000), now making its way up the east coast of the U.S., debuts at #23... Harry Potter reaches #10 this week thanks to the new book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but he still couldn't topple the magical nakedness of Darva Conger (#6)... speaking of misspellings, popular Conger searches included Darla Conger, Darma Conger, and Darva Congers... must be summer concert season: Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin returns to #45 after over six months off the Lycos 50... but band Blink 182 drops off after 21 straight weeks... video game Diablo II is hot as the devil, jumping 10 spots to #5.
NEW THIS WEEK: Big Brother, Tour de France, the Tall Ships, scholarships, The Perfect Storm, Tenchi Muyo, Ricky Martin, Shania Twain, Star Wars, Korn.
DROPOUTS: Mariah Carey, Oprah Winfrey, Beanie Babies, Blink 182, soccer tourney Euro 2000, the NBA, video game Half Life, the Olympics, famously pregnant Celine Dion, and the Human Genome Project.
BIGGEST RISE: Harry Potter, up 19 spots to #29.
BIGGEST DROP: Kid Rock, down 26 to #50.
AND FINALLY: This week's hit movie is The Perfect Storm, debuting at #28. (Nearly one-third of those searches were for the doomed ship the Andrea Gail.) Scary Movie also did surprisingly well, picking up about 40% as many searches as The Perfect Storm.
