HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS WITH DEAL OR NO DEAL.

The fun-packed festivities on Deal or No Deal’s Merry Christmas air on Monday 22nd, Tuesday 23rd and Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th December on Channel 4.

Snow is falling, sleigh bells are ringing and chestnuts are roasting meaning only one thing – Christmas is coming to The Dream Factory.

The Deal or No Deal contestants take to the wings in their seasonal finery in the hope of receiving some Christmas cheer from those infamous red boxes.

Each day will see Noel reach dizzying new heights of festive fashion as he sports one of four colourful Christmas jumpers, designed and made especially for him by local knitting groups.

As ever, the Grinch himself, The Banker will be trying to ruin everyone’s Christmas by sending our contestants home with as little money as possible. But with an opportunity to win a dream holiday by delivering presents from Santa’s Sleigh against the clock, there’s every chance Christmas could come early for our contestants. Either way, these seasonal specials will be ones that you don’t want to miss!

For the air times: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=26540

What, no Hanukkah special?

Looks like DOND is moving to 3PM from 2nd February!

Oh hell, that's the death knell then. It can't be anything else. This is the show's last year.

It may only be temporary...

It also means Countdown has been shifted to 2:10pm - surely its earliest ever slot!

A 20-episode series of Shipping Wars UK is taking the 4pm slot (and Couples Come Dine With Me from 4:45pm to 5:30pm), so this could just be a temporary move for four weeks while those 20 episodes air.

That genuinely looks to be an interesting series.

About DOND's move, the viewing figures will slump even further and this will be used as the evidence to justify the show's termination, the timeslot shift being ultimately disregarded or ignored in view of the POOR RATINGS SHOCKER.

I wonder what will replace DOND if it does go, it should. Crystal Maze would be a nice replacement, eh BankerSpanker?

Considering the set was teared down in 1998, that's highly unlikely. They may bring back the very similar Fort Board, though, as the set for that is as alive as ever.

Crystal Maze bored me even as a very young child, when a funny face drawn in pencil would amuse me.

Actually that'd amuse me now, it'd just have to be a *really* funny face.

But anyway, I propose this for the soon to be vacant 4pm slot - a live music chart show similar to The Tube. The music nowadays is crap, yes, but it should still have a place on mainstream TV (Jools Holland's a big pit of nothing, really) and this would be ideal.

If the show gets canned, what happens to this forum? I've often wondered about that.

It's up to whoever owns it. Is it retained for the archives as a shrine? Or will it be pulled apart and fed to the pigs?

I suppose it could be kept open for playing Race To a Billion, because where else would we be able to play that?

This is an issue I'm sure that forums dedicated to a single television program have mulled over in the past.

So many friendships have been forged here, it would tough to let the old place go if the show gets cancelled.

That is why I recently joined the golden road forums (a US Price is Right fan forum). That show is as solid as ever, so the forum is at little risk of being in jeopardy (pun not intended ) anytime soon. Also, it has a Friday Prediction Game where you get to predict the Pricing Game lineup for each Friday's show and a Host Your Own section where you can participate in and even host you own mock Price is Right game.

The only downer about is that it is a LOT more tightly regulated by the moderators. Any thread that is even remotely inappropriate will be locked immediately and they often perma-ban people who don't 100% follow the forum rules.

That forum is known for its insane members, and has been the subject of much ridicule over the years. You read Buzzerblog, so you likely know what I'm talking about.

This forum certainly has its characters, but no one that could ever be considered as "insane." Generally, everyone here behaves themselves.

Sometimes their moderation is too tight, to the point where the mods let the power get to their heads. We have moderation here, but it's far more lenient. Case in point, no one's been banned in years.

O RLY?

You only had the guts to impose a TEMP-ban

Actually, with talk about whether this forum will survive as an archive once the show is axed, it's got me thinking about something I read not long ago on a specialist 'Missing TV' forum - in another 20 years or so, enough time to judge the cultural importance of a certain TV show, only representative examples of game shows will be archived, with the remainder being disposed of. This appears to be the BBC's policy, so if they have plans to do this, it's almost doubtless that Channel 4 will.

It's a fair chance that about 10-20% of DOND will officially exist in the far future. I suppose now that Challenge have copies of at least all of the 2005-8 games, it'll be considered easier to dispose of the C4 archive holdings.

What do you lot think about this?

I was talking about perma-bans, H. I for sure deserved one of those a while back, but after 27 tempo bans, I learned my lesson.

Regarding the archiving of tapes, back in the '70s, many classic TV shows in the U.S. were lost to the sands of time due to a process called wiping. Essentially, they would completely clear what was on these tapes (or reels) and re-use them for the recording of other programs.

I don't think that North American TV networks still engage in this practice, especially now that everything has gone digital. But as you've said, it appears to be more commonplace across the pond, which is kind of sad, if you think about it.

And who knows, perhaps Channel 4 will provide Challenge with more Deal reruns in the future, provided if they decide to keep the thousands of Deal show tapes in their archive.