
The sixth season of CBS's American version of Big Brother consisted of thirty episodes aired from July 7 to September 20, 2005. It was hosted by Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen, who has acted as host of every season of the CBS incarnation of Big Brother to date.
For the 2005 season, the producers chose to make some changes to attempt to increase interest in the program. The theme song of the show was changed, but more significantly a new house was built. Some new features included making the house two stories, a secret room, a private bathroom for the HoH, a co-ed shower, and a digital picture frame for the houseguests. In keeping with recent Big Brother tradition, the sixth season was given a twist and the theme Summer of Secrets. The twist was that every houseguest in the game had one secret partner, but every pair believed that they were the only ones working together.
In the episode that aired July 28, 2005, host Julie Chen officially revealed to the houseguests that everyone had started the game with a secret partner, however all the contestants had already figured it out over the course of the previous 21 days. She announced that if one of the pairs made up the final two, the winner would receive a bonus prize of $1,000,000 with the runner-up winning $250,000, instead of the standard $500,000 and $50,000 prizes.
Big Brother 6 was home to the most popular houseguests in the show's history. As evidenced by CBS.com's popularity polls, Janelle Pierzina, Kaysar Ridha, and Howie Gordon were very popular with the show's fans, reaching all-time high popularity ratings. Pierzina received a rating of 93% in the final week of the show. Also the six members of the Nerd Herd, Eric, Maggie, Ivette, Beau, April, and Jennifer received all time low popularity results with Jennifer reaching a record 19%.
The winner og Big Brother 6 was Maggie Ausburn, a RN from Las Vegas.

In this, the sixth season of the show, known as the Summer of Secrets, each contestant had a secret partner, that they knew before the show, who would work together on the show. Maggie's secret partner was her friend, Eric Littmann. On week 3, her partner was evicted. The week after that she won HoH and nominated Kaysar and James. Maggie formed an alliance of friends (which would be later known as the Friendship, also known as the Nerd Herd) to fight off Kaysar's dominant Sovereign 6 alliance that evicted Eric. Though the house was clearly divided, Maggie managed to convince Howie to nominate two of his own allies (James and Sarah) instead of two members from her Friendship alliance. Howie's nomination of James and Sarah changed the entire course of the game, and Maggie's alliance ultimately won out against the Sovereigns when Maggie's ally Ivette Corredero evicted Janelle Pierzina on the 76th day in the house. Maggie and Ivette were the final two players remaining in the game. On the 80th day, the jury voted and gave Maggie the $500,000 prize in a 4-3 vote against Ivette. She received the votes of Jennifer, Rachel, Howie, and April while Ivette received the votes of James, Beau, and Janelle.