What happened to ‘Let’s Make a Deal?’

Let’s Make a Deal is one of the longest-running game shows currently airing. Millions of Americans tune into CBS every morning to be delighted by host Wayne Brady. However, the show didn’t air on March 21 and 22.

In Let’s Make a Deal, selected audience members can win a valuable prize. All they have to do is make a deal with the show’s host, choosing to keep the item in their possession or trade it for something else. There is a catch, though: players, also known as must choose if they want to trade without knowing the alternative prize. So, you could potentially trade a worthless trinket for a brand-new car; or you lose a couple thousand dollars in exchange for a giant bobblehead.

Let’s Make a Deal first aired in 1963. Over the decades, the show went on multiple hiatuses and reboots, keeping the core formula while shaking things up with new twists to its game. The show’s longevity has also granted it its own culture, with players being known as “traders” and bad prizes as “zonks.” However, to many fans’ surprise, CBS was airing something else on March 21 and 22 mornings.

Why didn’t Let’s Make a Deal air on March 21 and 22? And will it happen again?

By looking at CBS’s official calendar for Let’s Make a Deal, we can see that on March 21 and 22, the show is tagged as “Preempted.” While the word might sound scary at first glance, it only means that CBS got a good offer from an advertiser who wanted to fill that slot with different programming. It’s common for cable networks to bump some episodes of their shows around to make space for advertisers as that’s the only way to pay the bills at the end of the month. It’s also common for shows to be preempted for a political announcement, like a Presidential address.

Even though a couple of Let’s Make a Deal episodes got bumped, that doesn’t mean the show’s at risk. The choice of replacing an episode with something else is related to the time window of the original show and its potential public. So, even shows with huge audiences can be bumped if an advertiser wants to divert the public’s attention to something else. We could argue that the fact some episodes of Let’s Make a Deal got replaced is a sign of the show’s success, as its airing window wouldn’t be so valuable for advertisers if no one were watching it.

With that in mind, it’s important to underline that some future episodes of Let’s Make a Deal will get bumped in the future. According to CBS’s calendar, the April 30 and May 1st episodes are also tagged as “preempted.” So, when the time comes, there’s no need to wonder what’s happening, as Let’s Make a Deal always returns after “preempted” breaks.