Viewers who tuned into 'Big Brother' Saturday night saw a suspenseful broadcast as the new Head Of Household - Roddy Mancuso, the 30-year-old writer from New Jersey - nominated HouseGuests Marcellas Reynolds, the 34-year-old gay stylist and his best friend in the house Amy Crews, the 23-year-old real estate appraiser, for eviction next Thursday. What the viewers of CBS reality show didn't see but the subscribers of the 'Big Brother' live Internet feeds did is that right after their nominations were announced Crews and Reynolds were so upset that they threatened to leave the show immediately.

"I was surprised that they didn't have anything about Amy and Marcellas on the show. Many times over the past week on the Net Marcellas had mentioned things like...'I don't want to be in the house without you, baby doll'...or several other similar things. This got much worse after they got nommed at the same time. It was a emotional discussion that ended when they contemplated leaving together as a voluntary walkout. Big Brother (the producers) got them both in Diary Room for a significant amount of time from which I believe came the few clips that had them together on Saturday's show," said Anthony Yeatts (AKA: "Stark"), the most recognized and respected of the 'Big Brother' live feed reporters on the Web.

Eventually, cooler heads prevailed on the live feeds and the producers managed to convince Reynolds and Crews to stay following a 45 minute meeting in the Diary Room (private confessional in the house). Reynolds later warned some of his fellow HouseGuests afterwards of the consequences of walking out of the show.

"If you consider leaving, it is not a good idea. They own you," said Reynolds. Reynolds went on to describe how the producers wouldn't pay for their trip home and that he and Crews would not be part of any publicity surrounding the show if they left the game voluntarily.

The Reynolds - Crews situation isn't the first time the live events on the Internet don't jive with what is broadcast on the 'Big Brother' television show. Since its inception, critics, fans and contestants alike have charged that the producers "selectively edit" the broadcasts to suit the storylines the producers think are important, to portray players in the "roles" they have chosen for them or to hide potentially embarrassing situations from the general public, such as a threatened walkout. The evidence of such can be seen in the fact that on television the timeline of events is sometimes jumbled, the HouseGuest's quotes are at times taken out of context and the missing background information concerning key happenings in the house.

"I believe that editing is a large part of 'Big Brother'. As far as the shows go, they're accurate... unless you consider the material that's not being used. I can understand why some material never "makes the cut": too raunchy, boring, etc. But yes, there are important things that never get seen. Last year, the knife incident involving Justin and Krista comes to mind,' said Cat LeDevic (Alias: "Jokerette"), the owner and administrator of JokersUpdates.com, one of the leading sources for the live feed updates and fan discussion on the Internet.

Thoughts of a mutiny or walkout are nothing new to 'Big Brother'. In the first season, the HouseGuests planned to leave the show as a group. Again, the players decided against the idea. In reporting on 'Big Brother 1' for 'Salon', writer Martha Soukap observed that it was clear that the producers edit and rearrange footage to make the show more entertaining. "There is constant distortion of events. Crucial information -- information that would change a reasonable person's interpretation of an event -- is withheld from viewers," she wrote.

What the Internet feed viewers are aware of and the television audience isn't is that there is a difference in how the HouseGuests are portrayed on the tube and how they really are on the live feeds. For example, 'Big Brother 3' contestant Gerry Lancaster, the 51-year-old teacher, is very serious about getting in shape. On the Saturday's show, Lancaster was shown goofing off in the pool as some of the HouseGuests participated in a workout. In reality, Lancaster makes steady use of the elliptical trainer every morning and evening. The sessions are quite intense and can last close to forty minutes or so. In a more stunning case of "selective editing" though, the romantic pairings of HouseGuests Chiara Berti and Lisa Donahue with Roddy Mancuso and Eric Ouellette have been depicted as tender affairs. What has not made it to air is that Mancuso and Oullette have had many private conversations with one another about how they are conning the two women as part of playing the game.

"Of more importance to me is the way they like to characterize some of the characters. Chiara comes off as 'in love' on the show but on the feeds she's a very 'dirty' character. For example, she often gets involved with sexual discussions. One of which she went on for about 45 minutes on why monogamy was not natural and swinging should be more accepted," commented Anthony Yeatts (AKA: "Stark") on some of the discrepancies he has witnessed in watching both the Net feeds and the televisions broadcasts. "Chiara said the divorce rate would be down if only people weren't restricted to only one partner. She even went so far as to say that she would have absolutely no problem with her husband being with another woman or man. So why did I go into to much detail about this? Because look how jealous Chiara got on television over Amy moving on her boyfriend (Roddy). It would ruin the television storyline to show just how 'out there' Chiara is on some of these things."

In the media's manipulation of their lives on 'Big Brother' the contestants are willing participants. They are paid $750 U.S. for each week they remain in the house, have the chance to win half a million dollars and understand fully that the show is edited for television.

In a conversation on the Net feeds last weekend, HouseGuest Roddy Mancuso gave his thoughts on the show to the other players as they chatted about how important the Internet viewership is.

"The 'Internet people' have a real idea of what people are like whereas the TV show people only know us based on how we're being portrayed. It's interesting," said Mancuso.

In the first 'Big Brother U.S.A. series, HouseGuest Cassandra Waldon had a similar outlook as she spoke to her housemate Jamie Kern.

"The other thing that I hope the fans understand, too, is that what they see is also an edited version of what really happens in here. I pray that the edited version is an accurate reflection, but there is no way it can be completely accurate," said Waldon according to Martha Soukap's story for 'Salon'. Kern replied that it wouldn't be based on the hours and hours of footage the editors have to sift through to put together the television show.

In an interview with Jam! Showbiz earlier this month, 'Big Brother 2' HouseGuest Kent Blackwelder expressed his concern over how he was portrayed on the television episodes.

"These people are able to take the players on these shows and pigeon-hole them into any type of personality class they want to put on the show. They wanted me to be the old Southern redneck because they thought I hated gays and such. That's not the case at all," he said.

In an effort to curtail some of this talk and other happenings that they don't wish the Internet fans to see (like the all-important nomination meetings) due the affect it might have on the perception or ratings of the show, 'Big Brother' producers Arnold Shapiro and Allison Grodner have instituted some changes to the rules of the game and how the feeds are broadcast on the Internet. When most of the challenges in the game occur or when the producers address the HouseGuests over the intercom system in the house, the feeds go to a live shot of the front of the 'Big Brother' house with the show's canned theme music playing. Once the challenge is over or the address is finished, the feeds return. This method of "editing" is also used when the HouseGuests sing copyrighted songs (such as 'Happy Birthday') or talk about friends or family who didn't sign a release.

One of the drastic changes to the rules of the game is that the HouseGuests are not permitted to go home after they've been evicted. Unlike previous years, they are now sequestered in the Los Angeles area. David Lee, the boyfriend of booted player Tonya Paoni exposed the sequestering change to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper over the weekend. "She's allowed two 10 minute calls a week. She can't say anything about the game. All of our calls are monitored. It's worse than the CIA," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Despite the producer's best efforts, information about who has been nominated or who won the various competitions is eventually leaked on the Net long before the three weekly episodes air and the live happenings in the 'Big Brother' house are there for all to see. According to Cat LeDevic (Alias Jokerette), the television viewers are just not getting the whole story.

"There's no way they could. With 24 hour coverage, there's simply too much material to display and I'm sure what they DO decide to display is edited carefully. To get the full story of Big Brother, you absolutely have to either order the Internet feeds or log-on to sites like JokersUpdates.com. Otherwise you get a pale, watered-down version of the actual events," she said.