I see they are going back to a 4-15pm start next Tuesday 15th March and I am sure a lot of people will be pleased about that

If anyone wants to see what is cut out they will have to visit the Dream Factory

I had a look on the Radio Times website and it seems it's only on at 4:15 - 5:00 from Tuesday 15th to Friday 18th March. From Sunday 20th, it's back to being 1 hour.

EDIT... It looks like Channel 4 will be airing the Cheltenham Racing Festival from 15th to 18th March, which is why DoND has been pushed back to 4:15.

Thanks for that David, ah well it will be better for some poeple for 4 days

If I recall, when the Cheltenham Racing is on the episodes tend to be even shorter than usual. In previous years when the show was on after Cheltenham the episodes ran for around 33/34 mins (minus ads), but a usual episode ran for 36/37 mins (again minus ads and back when it was 45 mins long). Not a massive difference I know.

And again I may be remembering incorrectly, but didn't one episode have the credits edited out, or Noel's end speech or something just to make up a bit of time when the racing ran late.

Yeah you're right about the episode length thing. Alice's game happened during Cheltenham Week 2009, but as she won the £250k, they kept the episode at full length and Paul O'Grady's show was a few minutes late starting.

I think you're also right that all the episodes during Cheltenham Week (at least in 2009) had Noel's final "speech" to camera cut heavily to save a bit of time. That was certainly the case in Mavis's game anyway, as the credits rolled over a shot of the contestants (and a shot of me apologising to Mavis's daughter for stepping on her foot ) with an edited voice-over of Noel.

I just hope they had calculated that Cheltenham Week was on in that week when filming, and didn't just plough on regardless filming the 1 hour shows... and then suddenly realise! However, I'm sure the excellent on-the-ball team at Deal wouldn't make such an elementary mistake as that, though!

But if they didn't, we may have a 4 part show squeezed into 45 mins (although they could probably cut out a break link somewhere and hit some contestant with the Endemol logo at the end to make up time! )

Well there is only one way to know for sure and that's by asking the Banker on Twitter.

It's still a 5pm finish I take it?

These edits will be interesting again all of a sudden.

It's my personal opinion that the natural length of an episode of DoND varies too much - some games would barely cover half an hour without padding, others really do need an hour - for the show to work without straddling games. That's one thing the US got right with the format, I thought. However, nobody does it in a daily format, and I think it would be too much of a shock now to implement it. A shame, really, as it means we continue to deal with wildly overstretched games most of the time in the 65-minute timeslot...

Yes.

I think during the Cheltenham festivals in 2006-8, DoND ran from 4:30 to 5:15, with a 45-min Come Dine With Me from 5:15 to 6:00.

The problem at the moment is that a new series of Coach Trip is running from 5:30 - 6:00, and I doubt they'd want to cancel that for 4 days. Otherwise, I think DoND may well have been scheduled for 4:15 - 5:15, with another 45-min CDWM until 6.

I like the hour long shows depending on the contestant and when they deal. Some of them see too much padding, others are well worth the extra time!

I spotted on the official DoND Facebook page that DoND is now starting 5 minutes later at 4pm.

Although it probably won't make much difference - it's been starting at almost 4pm recently anyway. When it used to be on at 4:15, it'd normally start a couple of minutes early; and when they changed the start time to 4:10, it started a couple of minutes late.

You just beat me to it, I just read it on Twitter.

I wonder if they're going to slowly delay the time by 5 minutes every 3 months, so by this time next year, the show will be back to 45 minutes in length again.

Maybe they're hoping no-one will notice if they do it that way.

According to channel4.com/deal the show isn't even on again till Sunday 10th April.

It seems today's episode was slightly shorter than usual by about 3 minutes (I checked 4OD, I didn't actually count it).

Previous shows were about 46:30 - 47:30 minutes long (minus ads), today's was 44:30. So it looks like they've trimmed the show by about 2-3 minutes, if it's staying at 4pm. Not a massive difference, I know, but does that mean Channel 4 are just showing more adverts now to fill up the spare time.

It's all to do with playing with advert minutes - Channel 4 are allowed 12 in an hour, and the supposed 4:10/4:15 confusion was just tweaking to ensure the last break in the previous show was over by 4:00 so all twelve minutes could go during DoND. It's that simple!

I liked the 45 minute shows..