With 'Deal' finally approaching the end of it's run, I have looked back on the good times in the show, but I've also seen comment over the years about how the show has become too silly, boring or annoying.

But what do you think was the main thing that caused DoND to go downhill?

Definitely the show expanding to 1 hour was the main recipe for disaster. It made a lot of games with 11 and 8 box Deals naturally boring and drawn out, thus the show feeling the need to introduce all of these gimmicks to pad games out. I saw Jen's game live today and it felt as dull as a dishwasher thanks to all of the needed padding.

If you'd have asked me half a decade ago when I stopped watching it would have been things such as sob stories and silly behaviour. Those actually seem to be some of its forgiving features these days. It's many things really. The extension to an hour, the format getting quite stale but I really think it was the time shift. I would say The Chase could be there in another five years if they don't move it or fiddle with the format.

Deal was fine. Viewing figures declined when overall viewing figures declined due to online TV services and such, and they saw that as a call to change the format, when they really shouldn't have.

I hate Noel's emotional downing of players though. People develop good boards and he seems to just talk them down and try and make them emotional these days to induce a deal, it drags the whole mood of the show down. That's certainly the major factor for me, given what I've witnessed in the last 12 months.

Itself.

The over-abundance of gimmicks and the show being moved to a silly time slot.

After today's game I'd add cautious players and padding.

To be fair, didn't the move to the coffee+biscuit time slot happen after the final recordings? It was already game over at this point.

Too gimmicky, ran for too long, went stale.

45 mins was ideal length of time for the show, since moving to 1hr you know 99% of the time when player will deal due to when adverts are etc.

The button, box 23 etc just stupid, seems it was maybe an idea when the knew they had messed up making the show 1 hour long.

Personally don't mind the breaks for racing etc, would like to know how many shows they have per year say 220, and it's planned. I recall going to watch TY play and a fella from Newcastle who's name escapes me (Peed on bedroom carpet). When it was being filmed they could tell you the date months in advance when it would be aired, unsure whether they still can/do.

1 gimmick from memory when the done some special shows I did like was the timer, I would use a twist, give the player as an example 8 minutes thinking time, clock starts once banker makes offer, makes for quickfire thinking early on to save time for later.

Sadly it's all to late, the people who make decisions like this dont normally listen to what viewers want, deal worked in the early days as it was easy to play, the only thought was is that enough money for me. Tea time TV should be easy viewing, once you complicate it it's harder to follow.

R.I.P DOND

I got in from the pub last night and had Challenge on at 2am who just so happened to be showing the Christmas shows from 2008. £70k Patricia followed by £1 Orry back to back.

I couldn't believe how much they had me interested even though I had seen them before. No offer button, box 23 or hour long business.

A small Christmas twist at 5 box that was actually a game changer and it basically summed up exactly what used to make DOND so so good!

Funny you say that since December 2007 is considered one of the worst periods of DoND by most forum members, due to sob-stories and bad editing

Thought this topic would be the most appropriate place to put this.

Is it just me, or does DoND feel less "human" nowadays? For example, recently, after the game has concluded, there's been no "What will £x,000 do for you?" like there was when I started watching.

That probably stopped when the recession games were recorded around 2008.

''What will £10,000 do for you?''

''I can tell the kids there might be a Christmas after all.''

To be fair, i think they should really just get the show over with ASAP and i don't think it's really doing itself any favours by taking a break until late October (!) to air the final 40+ episodes before finishing for good.

The only valid reason they could be taking an almost-7 month break is to give us an idea of what life without DoND is like, but really, it's not doing anything besides dragging out the final run as much as possible

I kind of think it'd be better if DoND never comes back and they just leave it at David's game, his game had a very sweet victory so that'd be a nice enough way to end the series.

Why keep going to the end of the road if you've passed all the scenic stuff and must-see tourist attractions, and what's left ahead is just an unformed track which is riddled with potholes and traverses through a flat, baron landscape of dead trees, tumbleweeds and animal carcuses half-eaten by vultures, before coming to an unceremonious dead end in the smack-bang middle of nowhere

I would say they have killed the game for the loyal viewers through tampering with it in various ways over the year and killed it for the casual viewer with leaving it too stale - a difficult position for the production as which is the way forward?

I agree with Aaron Brocks conclusion in that gimmicks and sob stories were a big issue about 2007 time onwards and certainly lowered the games appeal - something also controlled by the production as they get the pick of the bunch when it comes to applicants. They (mostly) picked the emotionally exposed people, and those with targets for sentimental reasons - it saves the production money when they deal for £7,000 as nothing will hurt the endemol coffers more than a large box win. This way of thinking saved them money but cost them viewers.

I agree that the sob-stories and the increasing amount of gimmicks over the years led to DoND's downhill slide. But like Aaron says, at least back in 2009, at least the show wasn't stretched out back then to include useless padding and was still fairly watchable in 2009 despite there being quite a lot of gimmicks.

I sort of agree with the highly opinionated 'no gimmicks' crowd that commented on games on the defunct ilovedond site, in that i wouldn't mind the extra gimmicks and twists if they weren't being milked to death. But I think the change to the hour was the real start of the downhill slide

I think the show really started to go downhill from about mid 2010-onwards. Noel was starting to get annoying, the banker was becoming annoying by constantly ringing back, players were becoming more and more cautious, and what made things worse the fact that all these annoyances concurred show being stretched out to an hour-long slot at the start of 2011 to make average games very boring, slow and predictable

One thing I really hate is the banker ringing back as Noel asks the question to basically brainwash the player into dealing at the last second

Noel: "£20,000, Deal Or No Deal?"

Contestant is about to say 'no deal'

***RING****

Banker: think of your wife and children, and how you're letting them down if you play on and crash

Player gets emotional and deals. The player ends up missing out on a big amount by dealing too soon and is crucified by Noel

Box 23 started to kill the show, the idea itself was fine 'try and create a feel good ending for low money winners' but Noel just kept going on and on and on and on and on about it for half the show just to fill time and then 'the banker HAS to consider Box 23 when making this offer!' erm not really!

Then the Offer Button was another pointless extra tweak towards the end, again the idea had potential but it was totally ruined by the fact the games where it might have been quite interesting to have it in play didn't even need it in play as the banker would be sure to telephone with his 'extra offers' to try and stop the player anyway! Again, more filler getting the contestants to get the wings to help them predict the offer!

But just like Millionaire the main downfall was the continual conveyor belt of as Mark would put it extremely cautious x unlimitied not even 0.01% brave MASSIVE REGRET players! A classic example being Ann and Tim during double trouble week!

Adding to what everyone else has said, I'd say the falling ratings - which the show would have struggled to maintain after all this time anyway - led to it being moved to an earlier slot, a la Countdown, then the producers realising it's difficult to justify having a show with that prize budget (£10k is a jackpot win in most other game shows, here it's a below-average one!), with that number of viewers, on in that kind of slot... All of which probably played a role in the show's downfall.

Just with they'd bothered telling us sooner that it was being axed rather than leaving everything hanging in the balance for a year or more. Can't have been good for the crew, contestants or Noel.

Oh, they knew. For sure. Not for nothing did Tidybeard pack up his mansion and the crew would have had plenty of notice. Perhaps the contestants were cushioned, but everyone else knew the ship had docked.

The show simply lost its freshness, it was going to rot no matter what, even if it hadn't changed a bit since 2006.

It was *always* ripe for piss taking. Many of the show's criticisms were as valid in 2006 as they were ten years later. I've re-watched 'golden era' shows recently and it's helped knock the rose tinted glasses off my head. What people describe as ''too much messing about'' existed back then, just that less of it made the edit. 'Characters' more often than not cringed the kidney-wiper off you, young dears telling old dears just how much they'd miss them and how they'd shut themselves off from the world if you went away with less than a grand, people using their mind to determine what amounts lay in what boxes.

Its merits stretch as far as its magnetising addiction (simple premise that was effective, can never knock that) and the fact the contestants were occasionally quite fit, and would be on your screen for up to 3-4 weeks.

It didn't help that show was put in ridiculous time slots. Not many people would've been watching at 1:10PM and I think I remember there being one show on at 11:50AM!

I believe that was 5p Billy's game from July 2014 that was shown before lunchtime on a Saturday (the show was still being shown on a weekend, and i forgot why this game was shown on a Saturday instead of a Sunday), i can see why now, Billy's game was one of the worst trainwrecks ever - 6 non-offers resulting in a completely unavoidable blue win, and box 23 didn't help things either

@Psychokiller


The reason i agree with you there was, and people forget about this because of DoND being in it's peak at the time. Let's face it, banker was going through a crap offer phase for a good part of early 2006. A lot of big wins from March-May 2006 such as £35k Matt, £50k Saj etc. were achieved quite easily really, due to the banker making low offers after abruptly stopping his 2005 late game generosity around 1p Trevor's game (Others like £41k Sam and £75k Germaine also didn't get any super-difficult decisions until 2-box). We also did have some crap deals in this era like £9k Glen, £3,500 Peter, £3,100 Beryl, £12,900 Sandra, £39k JT (even though he got away with it) and £24k Linda that would've infuriated people on here if they happened in any other era

The offer patterns in 2006 didn't really start to pick up until probably the second half of May