Big Brother is a reality television show. In each series, which lasts for aroun three months, a number of people (normally fewer than sixteen at any one time) live together full-time in the "Big Brother House", isolated from the outside world but under the continuous gaze of television cameras. The Housemates try to win a cash prize by avoiding periodic, usually publicly-voted, evictions from the house. The idea for "Big Brother" came during a brainstorm session at the production house of John de Mol Produkties (an independent part of Endemol) on Thursday,September 4, 1997. The first Big Brother broadcast was in the Netherlands in 1999 on the Veronica TV channel. It has been a prime-time hit in almost 70 different countries. The show's name comes from George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which Big Brother is the leader of the dystopian Oceania.