Challenge - June 2016 onwards

Challenge know there is the possibility they will never air these shows in order, and also if they are airing back to back blocks of the show, "see you tomorrow" doesn't help, when in fact viewers will be seeing the next edition in two minutes time.


On a side note, I remember the big change with Deal or No Deal around 2014. Up until then, Noel would always state the day the show was airing, from around 2015 he stopped. Also it was around 2015 they abandoned all of their little specials they would do around Easter, Banker's Birthday, Summer Special, Halloween etc. They did put together the odd special, but those ones were dumped in 2015 which did signal the end of the show for me.

Surely if they're aiming for that they would have to start chopping out Noel's summary at the start of each episode too, as Noel usually goes on about the previous player and how their game went and how they had 1p in their box so today MUST be the day £250k is due to be on the table etc. etc.

It certainly went through quite a few time slot changes over the years, initially I seem to remember it was Monday - Saturday then at some point they randomly started airing two episodes a day for a few weeks, they also had the annoying spoiler-ish extended time slot episodes for contestants such as Morris and Laura (although of course the press spoiled Laura, it was nice for Alice and Suzanne to be complete shocks). Then when they went on their summer break in the first few years the producers (erm...I mean Noel of course...) hall of fame episodes would air

I was surprised they only ever gave the 'Live' format a single week as it certainly had potential and Noel seemed to enjoy the live element

The live shows didn’t deliver enough of an increase in ratings to justify the extra cost and the nolvelty factor that would have increased the ratings would have probably worn off by any second run.

The show was already pretty much done as live anyway with bloopers left in but they had the flexibility with pre-recording to do stuff like run up to the Bath Road and asking a random passer by what they thought the contestant should do in their game.

What I liked about early Deal or No Deal even though they were recorded in advanced they would react to things that were happening that day the Eurovision Song Contest for example. I think in later years it was moved around so much they couldn’t plan for stuff like that as it was recorded so far in advanced and kept getting moved around.

I think with Manchester and presumably the West End they changed the format of how they operate so instead of 4 teams of eight playing over an hour and a half a new team of eight enters the maze every 10 minutes. London must have been doing OK to justify the move to the West End.

Having seen some of the 'celeb' episodes... how will we notice the difference?

There's leaving bloopers in, there's leaving fillers in, then there's leaving stuff like this in:


Did they seriously have nothing else to insert?

DOND was far too long (especially after they extended it to an hour), no wonder they had to leave stuff like that in to pad it out.

I remember one episode of Deal when one of the contestants in the "wings" was rude and Noel had to take him outside. The camera followed them into the outside of the studio, surrounded by trees in full leaf, even though the episode was airing in late November. Noel as a side note said "We have a different eco-system here in Bristol where we record this, just in case viewers were wondering about the trees".

They recorded three episodes per day over five days. 15 episodes in one week. This meant that they were always recorded way in advance. I remember a friend of mine got to go to a "Halloween" recording in July.

How ridiculously over the top and dramatic, all because a box had a missing card!

They could have easily just had Noel say "this has never happened before, so would you like to continue on with re-shuffled boxes or start a new game?". The shots of him being motioned off set and the "sneaky" camera angles watching him talk to crew behind curtains make it sound like some super dramatic event. It's a fluff filled daytime game show. Get over yourselves!

I’m so glad you’re not in charge of TV as it would be dead boring.

If fake drama and the likes are what you need in a programme to find it entertaining, then good for you.