“Deal or No Deal” Commentary For 9/1/08

If you watch NBC at all, you know what happened.  Last night, Jessica Robinson* became the first person in US Deal or No Deal history to win the $1,000,000 top prize.  I want to specify this post is not in any response to her at all.  She played great.  She’s one of the few to go all the way and it paid off.  She got lucky and got to be on a show where Endemol begged for a million dollar winner.  The Banker gave a great final offer, she didn’t fall for it, and ended up winning the big prize.  Congratulations to her and her family.

And a big wag of my finger to NBC and Endemol who mismanaged every single thing they possibly could about the situation.  I understand spoilers, that’s fine.  Again, spoilers like this happened often during Who Wants to be a Millionaire? too.  Some of them were directly from ABC.  Some were because the show was so huge that there was no chance of anything remaining secret.  This is not the case for Deal or No Deal.  NBC and Endemol spoiled because the incredible dumbass that runs NBC, Ben Silverman, put what will arguably be NBC’s most interesting and special moment of the broadcast year on Labor Day.  They were afraid no one would watch.  They spoiled.  It’s going to be fun to see the ratings tomorrow to see if the spoilers had any effect.

NBC sent the clip of the win to the press on Thursday.  That far in advance.  That’s how far in advance they wanted the press to publish it.  And thankfully we didn’t.  This moment just didn’t feel that incredibly unbelievable to begin with.  It was a great win with a great production run by the staff.  The last six or so minutes of the show were some of the best they’ve ever done and some of the best Deal or No Deal I’ve seen, period.  However, the Million Dollar Mission, where they keep adding $1,000,000 cases until someone wins, spoils it a bit.  Yeah, she had only one $1,000,000 case for the final few rounds.  But you don’t know if she would have removed the actual big case.  And that’s why sadly Jessica Robinson* will always have an asterisk the size of some of the model’s implants by her name.

It’s a shame too, because, again, she played great.  I’m overjoyed she won.  But NBC and Endemol did everything wrong they could.  They will continue to as the Million Dollar Mission continues next week apparently.  And why?  Because they know no one is going to win the million dollars in a regular game.  If someone does, I’ll gladly (insert what you want me to do here).  But with the money chain so top heavy, the money becomes too much to carry on in a regular game.  So NBC and Endemol will continue pumping out Missions until people finally are sick of the show and the primetime version gets canceled.  It’s why I’m looking forward to the syndicated version so much.  There’s basically no time for a ton of gimmicks or anything beyond a couples edition here or there, or a Double Deal game or something, so it’s going to be straight game play.

So, again, congratulations to Jessica Robinson*.  It’s a shame you have to have the asterisk by your name, but blame NBC and Endemol for it.  It was a great game show moment for what it was at face value.  When you start digging deeper, which is sadly what we have to do, it gets a bit shady.