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NBC’s Deal or No Deal is probably the most exciting game show ever. It’s a no-brainer. No questions to answer, no images to identify and no flash answers. No buzzers too. Well, not exactly. There is a buzzer, the deal or no deal buzzer.

All you have to do is randomly select one out of the 26 cases and open the others to walk away with million dollars. This game show is driving america crazy. And it truly is. The biggest reason for this craziness is the simple rules-of-the-game, like sudoku[complete a board and you go crazy over it]. And ofcourse, the vivacious host. Howie Mandel. Out television hosts can learn how to host a game show effectively from Howie. A huge plus for the show.

This super famous show has a detailed wikipedia page. This is how they explain the game,

Deal or No Deal is a television game show format owned by Dutch-based production company Endemol, known for creating such shows as Big Brother. The basic format of Deal or No Deal consists of a number of cases (usually 26) each containing a different amount of money. Not knowing the sum of money in each case, the contestant picks one case which potentially contains the contestant’s prize. They then open the remaining cases, one by one, revealing the money they contained. At predetermined intervals the contestant receives an offer from the bank (run by “The Banker”) to purchase the originally chosen case from the contestant, the offer being based on the potential value of the contestant’s case. The contestant must then decide whether to take the deal from the bank, or to continue opening briefcases. If they decide not to take the deal and reveal low values then the next bank offer is likely to be higher (as the contestant’s case is proven not to contain these low values). Alternatively they risk revealing higher values, lowering future offers from the bank.

The Indian version, Deal Ya No Deal is up on Sony Entertainment. Good they didn’t plagiarize this.

[Image & Text Source – Kumudam]

How much ever we know about our favorite author, we are never contented with the available information. We always would like to know that extra personal story or scoop of him/her. His favorite books, favorite authors, his childhood, his inspirations and the origin of the creativity that amazes us through his writings. More and more. That’s one I reason, I’m very excited, writing this post.

This fortnight’s Kumudam Snehidhi has a special interview with Sujatha . Not Mr. Sujatha Rangarajan but the actual Sujatha in his name, his wife. After reading it, one couldn’t avoid a feeling that they just had a direct one-on-one chat with Lady Sujatha. She seems to be extremely modest and out-spoken. Who else other than his wife can talk more of this super star of Tamil book industry. Having been around him for 43 years, lady Sujatha lists the best and not-so-best Rangarajan with atmost ease. Though she talks about how he spends money lavishly on books, she saves the best of him to the end of the interview.

Reading the interview was a revelation for me. Truly. Not just because Sujatha is one of my favorite but it subtly shows a peak into a writer’s life. I for once thought it was only Charles Dickens who wrote and wrote and wrote spoiling his health and burning midnight oil. Though I’m not comparing Sujatha to Dickens[else the puritans would jump on me fiercely], Sujatha has unconsciously sacrificed a good amount of his life for writing. As lady sujatha says that he was so immersed in his own world of books that they weren’t even intimate during the early stages of their mariage life. And after moving to BEL in Bangalore, Sujatha became so busy in his writing world that he wasn’t able to spend time with his boys during their childhood.

On the flip side, she calls him a genius for the kind of self-taught he is. Especially in music. She says that Sujatha could play guitar and many musical instruments so well without having taken training for them.

Do take time to read this rather lengthy and interesting interview. You would need a UID/Pass to read Kumudam and its free on registration.

Looking at the growth of Vikatan.com, ‘leading’ Tamil weekly Kumudam is also getting a new look. And look whom they hired to do that. Rabi Bernard. Rabi known for his talk show, Naerukku Naerr [the Mudhalvan style] during the yester years of Sun TV, is currently with Jaya TV as a talk show host.

In any case, the deal with Kumudam.com is that, the site will perform like an infotainment site going forward. Instead of being just an online version of Kumudam, the site is expected to have videos, interviews, new clips and so on. And Rabi will be responsible for the packaging the content.

I was always wondering why Kumudam, which was competing with Vikatan offline, never sought to build up it’s site to match Vikatan. Now they are planning to overtake Vikatan with this. Competition is fun, for the consumers. Enjoy.