Was a big fan once. I know as you watch things continually you will grow tired of it. I just feel that the show has lost its appeal it once had. I think it either needs a break of a change in the format. One suggestion i would make is make the show half and hour and just get on with the picking of boxes. It just feel recently that the show is getting dragged out. All i really want to see is the contestant win or lose. Not really interested in the storys they seem to need to create ever show. It has become really boring. Alot of quizs are going for this delay and supense factor which means dragging out the final result. I have started only watching the end of if know as it seems to take longer to get there.

Milllionaire have cut the questions down to 12 which has improved the show. Less of the messing and more questions that mean something and are important. The gimics on deal or no deal have ruined the show somewhat. You can't always be funny and have guests who are going to create a story around the show. I think it would be alot better just getting on with picking the boxes and let the drama of the money create the show.

You need some interesting contestants and some wing banter to make the show interesting though. A lot of people (including myself here) found the show very boring in March 2007 and December 2007 when it turned into a set of robots opening boxes due to wing banter being edited out.

I think the show does need a bit of a break, but a change of format is not what it needs. Perhaps some more "offer after each box" twists could be introduced, but not a full format change in my opinion.

I would propose an alternative solution: games that straddle between episodes like on Millionaire. They do this in the US and it works very well, allowing naturally short games (early deals with rapidly resolved proveouts, or utter trainwrecks) to be condensed but allowing naturally long games (big-money, big-risk games, or perhaps those with lots of comedy worth keeping in the edit) to not be rushed.

Morris's game worked in 65 minutes because it was full of comedy early on and full of tension at the end; conversely there have been games where 45 minutes felt about 20 too long.

I think most people do care about the contestants' stories, as it adds personal interest to the show which not only adds something else to watch for but interacts with the game!

A few gamblers would make the show better in my opinion. No change of format or any gimmicks involved, just more power 5 box wins and tension. The lack of that is giving us a massive chain of deals and hence making the show boring...

Some different amounts on the game board would be more interesting like £25,000 and £150,000 every now and again (not for every game)... like the 15k for instance acting as a wild value and could be anything from 1p to £250,000 (hence a possible 2 £250,000's)

The real problem with the show is that if you dont have interesting contestants then theres no point in creating a storyline around them etc. To be honest the show has being going so long now i have become tired of it. Bound to happen no matter how good it was. I not really interested in the contestants to be honest and the odd one is amusing to watch. However to many are there to be the center of attention and try and take over the game. Fair play to them if they want to do that. But the real game is about the money and the boxes and the offers. Thats all i really want to see. Granted you get some great contestants but they are few and far bewteen. Most i have to switch of i dont really care about them. The show does need something done with it. I dont really watch anymore and if i do its only at the end if theres big money left. I think a decent break and cut the show to a half and hour and add a 500k box would bring back life into the game.

The real thing that is killing the show is the fact that virtually all contestants these days are content to win a few thousand rather than gamble for the big money. They have wised up and know if they play a cautious game they will go away with a reasonable sum for little or no risk.

Unless the producers actively seek gamblers then it won't change. Watching lame deal day after day is a turn off.

For me the show is dead and buried.

You've said this before, and I have to say that I for one would definitely not want to see this happen. I like the fact that there's a structure to each episode, and that I know I'm going to see a whole game from start to finish each day. Being forced to take a 24-hour hiatus partway through a game will not only be immensely frustrating, it will completely dissipate any sense of tension that may have built up to that point. Also, I can't think of many things more irritating than getting to 5pm with two boxes left, only for Noel to hover over the player's box and gleefully announce that we'll find out its contents tomorrow.



Now this I agree with. I've said this before, but at its heart Deal or No Deal is a programme about the people who play the game as much as it is about the game itself. If a viewer doesn't want to learn about the players, they're going to be disappointed. Personally, I do enjoy that aspect of the programme and I'd guess that most casual viewers enjoy it as well.

And this, along with the sense of "family" in the wings, is why I prefer the UK version to the USA version....

I agree partly, there have been far too many targetists and stuff and it's annoying in 2007. I'm not even a wakeyist and have been frustrated hence my interest level dropping.
I don't know what the show can do though, it's pretty hard to cast/get the gamblers and then have the luck of the boxes for a big win.

Some contestants recently (Jan, Feb) have only seen the offer in its raw magnitude 15/20K etc and not weighed it against the board and it's frustrating.

I have missed most of the show recently (15/20k wins by the look of it) but i'll give the show a chance (for now) to see if the gamblers return or at least analysts/calculated risk takers whatever.

I think the show is dropping, due to the amount of contestants who can't dare gamble a couple of grand, even though its a lot to them, with a lot of higher numbers on the board. I definately agree with everything basicasic has said. I find the part where you're missing the quarter mill in the final round very tense and exciting, but we need a lot more tension, as we keep having the same old games where the people deal early and not giving us much tension and excitement, which probably is one of the main aims of the show. If we could have a BALANCE of games each week, where a couple deal early, a few gamble the money and some inbetween games, such as 1990's money games. A balance of deals/no deals and good/bad games would be great to see happen each week, and it'd be great for the show with a lot more interesting discussions.

Every so often, we need something that'd really shock us, for example, Lynnes £22k No Deal and Graeme's £41k No Deal, which would be fantastic, really, or a shock in the sense of Beryl's sort of case.

The show is degrading, and we really need a balance of dealers and no dealers each week and a few good wins, and a few bad games. Now, it feels as if I'm watching More4 repeats each day.

We sure need variety. As I've said before, some people on the wings now need to have swapped with the Wakeyists of early 2007, providing variety to each period!

If ever there was a right time for a gambler to appear in the chair it's probably now... but hey ho. It's always going to be cyclical.

A variety of high wins would be good actually - e.g. 40-50K deals/ box wins etc to balance out the 10-20K era and we certainly need a shock every few weeks like Aaron has mentioned.

i don't know how the show can change the contestant selection though. A lot contestants come for 15-25K etc and while that is substantial money they aren't reactive to offer generosity against the board and the huge potential available sometimes.

Nice games like Derek's are fine too but they need to be nestled in amongst gambles.

I touched on this in the Today's Show thread, but maybe a change in the board structure is what's needed - I think have less worthless blue values and more low-mid red values to make gambing look more attarctive to players. I can certainly empathise with players who get offered sums they consider life-changing (such as 44k today but possibly less such as Woodsy), with a pocket change sum still on the baord and they are worried about winning that sum. You'd have to be very thick-skinned indeed to have life-changing money dangles in front to you that's yours if you say one word, then end up with £1 or something for the sake of trying to go for more/entertaining the public.

I totally believe basicasic when he says this, some other big no-dealers on here I'm not so sure about.

Maybe splitting the board into a three-colour structure of 7 values each (say blue, green and red) - the blues could be 7 sums worth less than £1,000, the greens worth sums between £1,000 and say £20,000, and the reds be the "Power 7" up to 100k, then have the 250k at the top in gold or something! I think that would definitely make gambling large sums of money more attractive, instead of people who take the box have a 50:50 chance of winning £750 or less, and only a 1 in 4 chance (less, actually) of a power 5 sum.

Surely the structure of the board makes not a jot of difference to whether a player has a predilection for risk or otherwise?

Also, surely it's the size of the banker's offers that determine how much of a 'gamble' it is to continue? If the producers were desperate for an edge-of-the-seat nailbiter they can simply make lower offers to encourage the player to take the risk. It doesn't matter what amounts were on the board to begin with at all.

I'm with misterAl here

Don't change the format just select players who are 'educated' about offer generosity and weed out 'targetism'. I'm no wakeyist and respect the value of money but I do get annoyed when someone only see the pound signs (e.g. 20K) not the board and an offer can easily be increased by taking a small/calculated risk on good board such as pat, justin and many others in jan/Feb.

I know a lot of players must have 'lousy current circumstances' etc
but it's annoying.

What was it appealing against?

An interesting idea, and one I'll run with even though I entirely agree with MisterAl's point that the generosity of the offers is what matters. I suspect they started casting for Wakeyists about the time these were filmed (when was that, MisterAl?) so whenever those players appear on air we might get another January 2007... anyway. Hypothetical board:

1p, £1, £5, £10, £50, £100, £500
£1,000, £2,000, £3,000, £5,000, £10,000, £15,000, £20,000
£30,000, £35,000, £40,000, £50,000, £60,000, £75,000, £100,000
£250,000

Mean is now £31,666.64 (from £25,712.12); FD is now £15,405.16 (from £9,215.40). It's a much more stable board, to the point that volatility if the quarter-million goes first is just 0.29 (and the FD would still be over eleven grand!); I suspect you'd get some different games this way, but I'm not sure.

Making the four-box and three-box offers permanent - or even just the latter - might make a difference also, and would be a far smaller and potentially popular change.

This makes it look like I agree with what you're saying about "weeding out targetism"! I absolutely don't agree with that! I want to see lots of different attitudes to the game, including gamblers, targetists, analysts, spiritualists and everything in between! And like I've said before, people who understand the odds and generosities are no more or less likely to take gambles as anybody else. They'll just understand the risk they're taking a bit better.


Today's game with Shaz was recorded on Thursday 6 December 2007. It was the last week of recording before the Christmas break.

But what you don't understand is that this show is about changing peoples lives. We've got to understand that if people make a random deal we know that money changes their lives but if people win 20k for a whole month then it's boring thats why the show is losing appeal becuase many of the fans feel as it needs mega money to make the show more interesting to viewers. I feel that I'd rather watch a ledgend player win a decent sum of money rather than see a quiet contestant win 100k

I may sound like a bit of a Dub (Native of Dublin) but thats how I feel

Well I'm back into DOND... I started watching it in it's 1st or 2nd week... then during the last world cup they put it on twice a day and I got bored with it.. I was off it for a good six months...

Never miss it now, but as Noel says some people forget they only sit in the chair once and should go for it. Problem is different amounts mean different things.

For eample £15K to a younger person is a brand new car, or a good deposit for a flat, but £15K to an older person is three nice hoildays.

A couple og decent characters recently but WTF is Joy doing there?