Let's Make a Deal/Trivia

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• Dueling Shows: With The Price Is Right, to an extent. Deal had games in which contestants had to guess the prices of grocery items. When Price returned to the air in 1972, it was reformulated to include similar games. Mostly averted now as both shows appear on the same network, although Deal no longer has the pricing deals to avoid being too similar to Price.
• Hey, It's That Guy!:
  • Averted with Monty Hall, as this is pretty much the only thing he's known for. While the man did host several other games (It's Anybody's Guess, the 1979-80 Beat the Clock, the 1986-87 Split Second), none were nearly as prolific.
  • Dennis James would later become famous for a nighttime syndicated version of Price, which was both his longest-running game and his last. Despite this. the effect it had on the show's popularity, and the fact that it was in development long before CBS became interested...James' Price has become rather obscure.
  • Geoff Edwards hosted the Chuck Barris versions of Treasure Hunt.
  • Bob Hilton was being considered to replace Johnny Olson on Price, but turned down that opportunity to host two pilots. ^[1]
  • Billy Bush is the host of Access Hollywood and a cousin of George W. Bush.
  • Ricki Lake had a self-titled talk show.
  • Wayne Brady is best known as a regular on the American Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which was hosted by Drew Carey (who currently hosts Price).
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Most of the announcers.
  • Wendell Niles, announcer from 1963-64, had a career dating back to 1930s radio (The Milton Berle Show).
  • Jay Stewart had a career dating back to the golden age of radio (It Pays To Be Married). Deal was his first announcing role, and he would later announce games such as Tic-Tac-Dough, The Joker's Wild, Sale of the Century, and Scrabble.
  • Voice actor Brian Cummings (Bumblelion, Dimmy Finster, Papa Bear) was the announcer for the 1984-85 season.
  • Disc jockey Dean Goss, in his first announcing role, replaced Cummings for the 1985-86 season and would later go on to announce a handful of other games.
  • Vance DeGeneres, older brother of comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, announced the 2003 version.
  • Rich Fields was announcer on The Price Is Right from 2004-10.
  • Jonathan Mangum, a cast member on Wayne Brady's self-titled show, is the current announcer.
• Milestone Celebration: The show celebrated its 50th Anniversary (albeit months ahead of the actual anniversary on 12/30/13) with a two-week stretch between 2/18-3/3/13 with deals integrating elements from the 1963-1977 run, the return of the $50,000 Super Deal, and the March 1, 2013 show featured a deal done by Monty Hall and Carol Merrill (from the original ABC/1970s syndicated run).
• Screwed by the Network: Several times, in fact.
  • Hall wanted to move the show elsewhere after NBC balked at the idea of putting a nighttime version on its regular schedule, despite a nighttime version in Summer 1967 consistently beating its competition.
  • The ABC version was screwed by the network's attempts to boost ratings by having the show offer huge prizes and go to an hour-long format. When this failed, the show was moved on December 29, 1975 from 1:00 PM to Noon — against High Rollers on NBC and local programming on CBS. Despite initial success (forcing Rollers to 10:30 AM and defeating its replacement, the return of The Magnificent Marble Machine), Deal fell on July 9, 1976 against The Fun Factory.
  • The 1990s version was originally hosted by Bob Hilton. Hall replaced him as "guest host", with the intention of eventually doing a series of on-air auditions, then picking one of the candidates to host the show on a permanent basis. NBC had other plans, and canned the show outright.
  • Big Deal had far too many things going against it to list here, the least of which was being slotted right after NFL games...which tend to go overtime.
  • The 2003 run had an unproven host (Billy Bush) and several skits that smacked too hard of trying to be "hip" and "modern". Then, on the last aired episode, a one-deal appearance by the Big Dealer himself made Bush look like a total imbecile. ^[2]
• Talking to Himself: In the two deals below, Dean Goss is hosting and announcing at the same time, but according to the comments his announcing was pre-taped.
• What Could Have Been:
  • During his year as announcer, Goss hosted two deals with Monty appearing in cameo. Goss said in a later interview that these deals were done on purpose — had that version been renewed, Monty would've passed the torch to him on the season premiere.
  • Shortly after Big Deal's six episodes had aired, there were talks of bringing it back in March 1997. The new episodes would have been a half-hour long, and Mark DeCarlo would have been paired with a female co-host. This didn't fly, and the first six episodes became the only six episodes.
  • Gordon Elliott hosted a pilot for the 1998-99 season, but it was never picked up.

1. ↑ (Fun For The Money and Bamboozle, the latter of which was an Expy of To Tell the Truth to the point where Mark Goodson slapped Chuck Barris with a lawsuit.)
2. ↑ (Nothing against Bush or any other host, though — Hall is just that good at making a very complicated job look easy.)