Given the payouts last December (£454,296) and especially this last month of January (£883,485.99), can Endemol easily handle these sort of payouts or if this started to happen more consistently would it put them under financial pressure, and cause the banker to make higher offers to try to get contestants to deal earlier to save them money?

Are the high wins good publicity for Endemol and will they help with higher viewing figures translated into higher revenues for them? There were newspaper reports last year that Who wants to be a millionaire had made the questions more difficult to compensate for high payouts that were not supported by higher profits.

There has been more pressure in recent times, not least by Noel to encourage contestants to gamble more as this makes for good entertainment, but it also usually translates into higher monthly payouts. Will there come a point where contestants are encouraged to be cautious and deal earlier to save Endemol money?

I shouldn't think the big payouts effect endemol at all I wonder how many thousands ring in a day for the viewers comps, then there is the bt sponsershop, and the venue from the ads shown during the breaks.

i agree
the competition should raise more than enough on average to handle big wins

payouts wouldnt hurt endemol at all. Endemol as an entire company is vastly wealthy with programs like The Mint. They have Big Brother as well so i cant imagine them being short of cash.

I'm sure they secretly wish people will do more badly though
But then again, if there's a £250,000 winner like Laura, word spreads and they'd get big ratings!

I was watching Lynn (show 1)'s game earlier on, and I noticed how Noel was trying to remind her that even the very low offers were real money, etc., and he advised her to put the money on the board - and another example is how in Lyndsey (show 12)'s game, Noel reminded her that her opening offer of £800 is "much greater than anything remaining on the left hand side of the board".

Nowadays, Noel encourages people to no deal and makes them feel guilty for dealing too early when they could've got more money by playing on. Therefore, it'd appear that in the early shows they were tying to prevent high wins, but nowadays they're actively encouraging them - maybe showing that money isn't really an issue for Endemol, due to the revenue they got from the aforementioned adverts, sponsorship and viewer's competition.

I think for reasons that people have said, Endemol can handle these payouts fairly comfortably although I can't believe they'd want too many jackpot winners. It also raises the question that if they can easily afford these payouts, then the time that they raise the jackpot may not be far off, after all you have to think about inflation etc. since October 2005. I mean what can £250,000 buy these days?!

We do also have to take into account whether Noel's had a pay rise!

If Endemol can afford to splash out so much on DOND why cant they spend so much on Big Brother which gets much higher ratings and more press coverage

You have to put the early games in context. DOND was then a gameshow new to UK TV. Whilst the format may seem incredibly simple, at the time, Endemol were keen to ensure that viewers fully understood what was going on and the effect of choices.

Often Noel's advice to the player was merely a way of giving the viewer additional explanation. In the very first games, players were told that a swap wouldn't be offered as that was a development which might be introduced 'later'

I thought show average winnings run at around 14K or 15K. Even a few large wins over a significant number of games, don't actually add up to much in Endemol terms. Huge advertising revenues, comp income etc.... I'm sure they'll be OK

I would say that they are affected by these payouts - certainly nothing else on daytime TV comes close (though others are trying to catch up...). However ratings have soared by around 75% since the early days, and the fact the show was renewed for 230 shows on the back of those relatively modest early ratings clearly shows that the show would have been profitable with lower ratings than it's getting now.

Having said that, it's still a daytime show on only the third most popular channel in the UK, in spite of getting very big ratings given that. 3.5m viewers per day may not be enough to maintain £25k-a-show payouts without something happening...

In the last few weeks, I've noticed that Noel has been sort of encouraging the player to deal. I noticed it particularly in Gabrielle's game a few weeks back and Millie's game yesterday and to a certain extent, with Bunney last week. There have been others, but those are the three that really stick in my mind. I might be wrong, but that's how I've interprited it.

well, according to the crew they get at least 300,000 calls per day and often a lot more plus they will also get a percentage of the advertising revenue ie during the breaks and they are also spponsored by the phone book which I reckon will run into several hundred thousand pounds so all in all I think they are quids in.

There have been a lot of big winners recently but remember there have also been some smaller winners like Don, Dennis, Simon, Craig plus a few who went with under £15k eg me, Peg, Ryan, Gabrielle etc etc so on these days they are well up financially.

The running costs will be pretty small as well - it is a tiny crew.

Pam

Game shows are famously cheap to produce, certainly compared to scripted dramas (and I'd imagine they're a fair bit cheaper to produce than some of the property shows that throw themselves around the UK and often beyond). It's just that the (rather American) idea of the big-money weekday game show never made it to the UK until DoND.

LTL included, DoND is giving away £20-£25k per show. TV producers tend to work in terms of hourly payouts, so for the sake of argument we'll say £30k per hour. I suspect that's funded through the LTL alone, and even if that revenue stream is cut off through Ofcom and/or people having the sense to use the free web entry, the ad revenue will do the job.

The real expense is what Channel 4 must be paying Endemol for the rights to the format, seeing as it's the biggest game show in the world right now...