In the worst-kept secret on television since Alan Brady's toupee, a lady won the million dollar prize in the episode of Deal or No Deal that aired last night. Just in case the promos hadn't made it clear, the opening of the show pretty much announced it…and then during the program, there were little spot announcements announcing how much time remained before the spectacular ending of the game. By the time they got to the reveal of the final briefcase, the win was something of a disappointment…not just because they'd blown all suspense but because by now, given what other shows have given away, it's like "A whole hour just to win a million dollars? Drew Carey gives that much away during The Clock Game!"
I'm curious what this is going to do to Deal or No Deal, both in prime-time and in the new daytime version which debuts next week. Will it generate new interest because the game now seems winnable? Or have people only been watching to see if the million would ever get won…and now that it has been, the show has shot its wad? How much interest was there in the second moon landing?
A few weeks back, I wrote here that some of the Deal or No Deal games are deadly dull because the top prizes are eliminated early so the contestant basically spends the last half hour struggling to win a few thousand bucks. One of the prize models has been writing me and she says that they've taped a few games that were so uninteresting that those episodes have been discarded or at least postponed indefinitely. Apparently, there's been at least one session where, rather than let the contestant continue to play for a relatively small amount, they simply stopped the taping, awarded the top prize money to the contestant and threw out whatever they'd taped.
That's one thing they've been doing to keep interest up. I can't help but feel that it won't be enough and that they're going to have to start instituting new rules and gimmicks, as well as ratcheting up the cash giveaways. It's too lucrative a franchise for them to give it up without a fight. Maybe they could bring on a lot of frat boys as contestants and give them the option of taking the amount of money in the case or the lady who opens it. If they haven't thought of it yet, they will.