Sunday trading

A curious thing about the Channel 4 press office is that, long before they update their website, they put out advanced scheduling info via their “tape list” email. This is a weekly update they send out to the media, detailing what preview programmes they have available on DVD (but – you know – we still call it a “tape list”). Each show is accompanied by a TX date, making it an invaluable first port-of-call to find out what C4′s doing, when.

So, here’s an interesting snippet from today’s dispatch, for what they’re calling Week 23 (ie, w/c Saturday, 10 June).

On Sunday 11th, they’re listing … Deal or No Deal?. Yes, I’ll repeat that: Sunday 11th. The accompanying, seemingly innocuous, blurb reads: “The successful Noel Edmonds quiz show goes prime time”.

Deal or No Deal?, seven days a week, then. It’s happened. And there was us just six months ago fretting about if it would win a second run. Of course, there aren’t actually any preview tapes available (there never are).

So how will Noel celebrate dealing on the Sabbath? Well, let’s see if anyone actually reads this thing and ask for your suggestions as to what bit of business he’ll get up to on the first Sunday edition. Any and all submissions (but most likely none) will appear right here on the blog.

STOP PRESS: Chris Hughes has just been on the OTT phone to point out: “That’s the first Sunday of the World Cup, of course. I wonder if the reference to prime time, there, confirms the mooted (but seemingly previously denied) proposal to have extra episodes running at 8pm throughout the tournament as an alternative to the football? I genuinely doubt even Channel 4 would consider running DOND seven days a week permanently.”