Deal or No Deal’s back, baybeeeeeeee

You’ve already read them so I won’t bother linking to any of them but the reports are suggesting ITV are in the early days of developing Deal or No Deal, with Stephen Mulhern being lined-up to host (they wanted Ant and Dec but the Banker called and offered them Stephen on an Ant and Dec/Vernon board etc etc.)

Obviously we go back with DoND a long way, we were writing about foreign versions of it before our version even started all those years ago, and of course for many years many of us were F5-ing like crazy following the live commentaries other people were providing here whilst in the office on an evening, and pointed out quite a bad security flaw. It’s a shame I never got to visit The Dream Factory in person, but it was still thrilling seeing it at Alexandra Palace as part of its farewell closing tour. I’m a lapsed fan, but at its peak it really was absolutely extraordinary – probably the first studio show of its kind where you watched people having to live with the consequences of their actions in frequently inglorious detail.

So I think it’s quite important to temper expectations a bit. For a start, this is *probably* going in weekly primetime. How many weekly primetime versions of it around the world have succeeded in the last few years? Only one really, and it’s the granddaddy, Miljoenenjacht with its €5m top prize. ITV are not about to put up a £5m top prize, they struggle to give away a tenner on Limitless Win. I fully expect them to up the top prize to £1m – but here’s the horrible little secret – upping the prize money does not necessarily make the game more interesting, it just means you’re going to hit the mean “£100,000, that’ll do” point much quicker. And they will have to reach that point because these are big prizes and they will have a budget – traditionally big budget versions have much more generous bankers, because they don’t want to be giving away £500k+ a game. Whatsmore UK players are unlikely to have the same mindset towards risk as their US counterparts especially during The Cost Of Living Crisis (TM), and no gamble (whatever it is we’re saying instead of “gamble” now), no game.

They could do it like a daily version – but these haven’t done that well recently either – They bought it back in France as COVID programming – not on any more. They bought it back as a daily show in the Netherlands in 2021 – not on any more. They are once again about to bring back Affari Tuoi on Italian TV, very much the granddaddy of the format as we know it in the UK, but they seem to do roughly every six months after it gets axed so not sure what to read into that really.

I think Stephen will be an OK host – I certainly think audiences (especially younger ones) are happier with him these days, and he’s certainly good with people which will be vital. I just think ITV have to be really really really careful with how this is pitched to the audience, it is certainly not a guarantee that people will care that it’s back once it’s back. Personally I think it might be a few years too soon. We will see.