Noel Edmonds Signs for Two More Years of “Deal or No Deal”
Noel Edmonds, the host of the popular and fantastic Channel4 game show Deal or No Deal, has signed a new two year contract to keep the show in England through 2012. A few months ago there was a bit of uncertainty about the show due to Channel4 and Endemol UK about budget cuts. They’ve managed to compromise, and one way is to tape four episodes a day rather than three. For comparison’s sake, the US version tapes about five shows a day.
Two interesting things came up in the article I got the information from, courtesy of The Guardian. One is they tape about 260 episodes a year. Given they air six episodes a week (correct me if I’m wrong), that’s around 43 weeks of shows a year. American seasons last around 90-100 episodes less, so that’s pretty amazing. The second is that the budget per episode is around £50,000 an episode for the upcoming ones shot. Any one have any idea what the US budget per episode was? That’s not massively larger than what I’ve had some popular cable game shows per-episode budgets quoted to me.
Regardless, congratulations to Endemol, Noel, Glenn Hugil, and the entire Deal UK crew. It’s one of the best game shows in the world and they really made the show something special and unique, which is why we are seeing their version stick around. And it’s why we are seeing our version die a slow, painful death.
Glenn Hugil was hilarious as the host of The Mole. Has it ever been officially confirmed that he's the banker?
Long live UK DoND! Congrats Noel and the crew :)
Horray for UK DoND! I wish we could get something like it over here, but I think that people wouldn't give it a chance after our version…
Never officially confirmed but it's hardly a secret. He's now the commentator on The Whole 19 Yards too.
Re: number of episodes – they only have 4-5 weeks off in the summer and continue through all bank holidays and Christmas, so it's about 48 weeks a year it's on air, which would be around 288 episodes a year. I don't really know why they continue with the weekend shows because most people tend to forget them and it rates lower than the weekday shows – they could get away with just repeating the "game of the week" or something, and save themselves £50k a week.
And it was why The Weakest Link die a slow, painful death here and it's still on in the U.K. It seems that it's true, the British TV executives ARE smarter than ours.
Funny that Link is brought up with Deal. These 2 shows should be brought back with their original hosts on NBC Friday nights in the USA. Though i would hire a new producer for Deal to make sure it’s like Seasons 1-2 not 3-4.