In short order, however, audience members began to dress in outrageous and unique costumes to increase their chances of being selected as a trader, and that has become a signature feature of the show.

[1][2][3] The current edition of Let's Make a Deal has aired on CBS since October 5, 2009, when it took over the spot on the network's daytime schedule vacated by the soap opera Guiding Light.

According to executive producer John Quinn, all COVID-19 protocols are in effect during production, including social distancing, testing, masks (only for crewmembers and while off set), and personal protective equipment.

Distributed by ABC Films, and then by its successor Worldvision Enterprises once the fin-syn rules were enacted, the series ran until 1977 and aired weekly.

[14] A revival of the series based in Hall's native Canada was launched in 1980 and aired in syndication on American and Canadian stations for one season.

Like the program that it replaced, the soap opera Guiding Light, affiliates can choose to air it in either time slot; Eastern time zone affiliates prefer the early slot to pair the two CBS daytime game shows together (which was the case pre-1993 with CBS Daytime game shows as a morning block).

[citation needed] However, no new episode is available on days CBS Daytime pre-empts shows for live sports (current such cases are the Thursday and Friday of the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament, college football games on Black Friday, the Sun Bowl and UEFA Champions League knockout phase matches), to ensure those markets that air the show late won't lose an episode to live sports.

CBS did this to fill a gap between the final episode of As the World Turns, which ended a fifty-four-year run on September 17, 2010, and the debut of The Talk.

[citation needed] Although the current version of the show debuted in September 2009, long after The Price Is Right (which made the switch in 2008, first with primetime episodes in February, then daytime in September) and the two Bell created daytime soap operas had made the switch to high definition, Let's Make a Deal was, along with Big Brother, one of only two programs across the five major networks that was still being actively produced in standard definition.

This encompassed the entire original daytime series, which ran until 1976, as well as the accompanying primetime episodes that aired on both NBC and ABC and the three syndicated productions that launched in 1971, 1980, and 1984.

He was absent only twice during that span due to illness; in 1971 Dennis James was called on to substitute while in 1985 Geoff Edwards hosted a week of episodes while Hall recovered from a bout of laryngitis.

The original daytime series was recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank, California, and then at ABC Television Center in Los Angeles once the program switched networks in 1968.

The theme, along with all incidental music, was performed by an in-studio combo led by Ivan Ditmars, consisting of an electric organ, guitar, drums, and on the nighttime version, a harp.

The final season of the nighttime show taped in Las Vegas eliminated the in-studio band in favor of pre-recorded tracks, due to Ivan Ditmars' retirement.

The 1984–86 version featured a brand new theme provided by Score Productions, although original composer Sheldon Allman returned as music director for the first season.

Traders who choose boxes or curtains are at risk of receiving booby prizes called "zonks", which can be outlandish items (live animals, junked cars, giant articles of clothing, etc.)

On rare occasions, a trader receives a zonk that proves to be a cover-up for a valuable prize, such as a fur coat hidden inside a garbage can.

As the end credits of the show roll, it is typical for the host to ask random members of the studio audience to participate in fast deals.

The Big Deal serves as the final segment of the show and offers a chance at a significantly larger prize for a lucky trader.

Starting with the highest winner, the host asks traders if they are willing to trade in everything they have won to that point for a chance to choose one of three numbered doors on the stage.

In addition, instead of using mini-doors, the cash amounts were hidden in three large colored envelopes of red, green, and blue, respectively referred by Brady as ruby, emerald, and sapphire.

During the first week of the 2015–16 and 2016–17 seasons on the Brady version, any trader who won a Big Deal had a chance to win the day's "Mega-Deal", which consisted of every non-cash, non-zonk prize offered during the episode.

On the November 17, 2023, primetime episode (Season 14), all three themes were played on the episode, plus two alliterative themes made for the day based on popular culture, Taco Tuesday, with a deal based on a taco truck (driven by Tiffany Coyne), and Throwback Thursday, which used clips from the 1963–76 version and the current version in 2010 and 2013, all of which featured Monty Hall and Carol Merrill.

Upon the original Let's Make a Deal's debut, journalist Charles Witbeck was skeptical of the show's chances of success, noting that the previous four NBC programs to compete with CBS's Password had failed.

[35] In 2006, GSN aired a series of specials counting down its own list of the "50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time", on which Let's Make a Deal was No.

[36] In 2014, the American series won a Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song for "30,000 Reasons to Love Me", composed by Cat Gray and sung by Wayne Brady.

In the late summer of 2006, an interactive DVD version of Let's Make a Deal was released by Imagination Games, which also features classic clips from the Monty Hall years of the show.

In 1999, Shuffle Master teamed up with Bally's to do a video slot machine game based on the show with the voice and likeness of Monty Hall.

[64] In an interview with The New York Times reporter John Tierney in 1991, Hall confirmed that when the host behaves strictly according to the problem description, it is advantageous for the trader to take the trade.

Yet as host on the show, he could decide which trades to offer based on the traders' prior choices, which allowed him to play on them psychologically and control the number of wins.