Deal or No Deal

Looking forward to it - not a lot has been announced about the prime-time shows. Will the money vaules be increased? Will there be the same contestants as the weekday version? The extra 15mins could be because of having different contestants to usual with only one chance to get to play and they're selected by answering questions (as in other international versions.

Or, given that this is now a primetime show with much popularity, more advertising space being allocated?

The show doesn't need an extra 15 minutes padding. Padding is already painfully obvious in the 45 minute version.

They have never said the contestants are selected randomly. It's always just "Who is playing today!"


From all the press stuff the Saturday shows will feature the same contestants and same format. It appears they'll just be padded out a bit further (expect breaks after R1, R3 and R5 rather than R2 and R4).

I don't get why they didn't leave it another week until Dancing on Ice finished. Personally I think the show was better off staying in it's slot opposite Stars in their Eyes kids!

Well as SE says, it certainly doesn't need any more padding.
I hope they don't lose it's impact and make it boring. Still we have always got the video recorder to move pass the ads and the lengthy bits!

Looks like Channel 4 on Saturday nights are looking up. Deal followed by Bremner Bird and Fortune... lovely stuff!

Well there you have it; simply more discussion in the studio and an additional break just before the 'hotseat' contestant's box was opened in terms of time allocation.

Slightly different lighting and shots were used this evening as well.

Great show; the woman took £41k when she only had 15 in her box.

Different music at times too. I wonder whether there's any *fixing* that goes on to have such a great show on Saturdays. Last week's was an exciting one as well.

Would be hard to fix as he mentioned that tonight's show was being shown tonight the 4th of March during the banter. They may however decide to choose the contestant that plays on a Saturday I suppose.

Since the early days it's been the more high profile contestants who play the Saturday show.


I think it was pretty obviously recoreded as a regular 3-part 45 minute show.

You could tell that Noel's link to and from the final break was recorded seperately from the main show - being all done close to the screen.


It wasn't too bad stretched to an hour - and I'm sure eventually they'll rejig the breaks to have them after round 1, round 3 and round 5. Didn't particularly feel slow at all.


And there were definately some new music - and a new lighting effect for the banker's calls.


Anyway, look out for loads of reports on Monday on how primetime Deal or No Deal is such a flop after being up against Dancing on Ice.

I think it'll be a different story when ITV begin their run of Saturday "we've got nothing else to put on" Movie Premieres in a couple of weeks.

To be honest though I don't think it's about Deal at all - it's Saturday ratings have improved since airing at around 6pm. I think it's more about giving a leg-up to Bremner Bird and Fortune.

After all, wasn't the primetime Deal or No Deal promoted as being for six weeks or so!

It's weird but the Saturday night shows have been much better than the weekday ones lately; but there is a danger it will burn out quickly with so many editions.

I have to say, watching tonight's show, you did get a feeling it was 'staged'.