Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was running in the states for 3 or 4 nights a week for most of the year after a few initial striped series. But the US questions did seem much easier. Then in daytime series the jackpot was only won twice in the first series and only once after which was a ‘must be won thing’.
Just watching Pat Gibson phone a friend on the million quid question and something I hadn't noticed before...his 'friend' was 90% sure of the answer! The syndicate at work?!
His friend won £250,000 on the show two months earlier, using for
his
Phone a Friend a chap called Pat Gibson. He was also 90% sure.
I don’t really know why they used ‘90% sure’ to say they were ‘100% sure’, is it because it used less syllables or was it just their way of leaving their secret organisations signature on the show?
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was running in the states for 3 or 4 nights a week for most of the year after a few initial striped series. But the US questions did seem much easier. Then in daytime series the jackpot was only won twice in the first series and only once after which was a ‘must be won thing’.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was running in the states for 3 or 4 nights a week for most of the year after a few initial striped series. But the US questions did seem much easier. Then in daytime series the jackpot was only won twice in the first series and only once after which was a ‘must be won thing’.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was running in the states for 3 or 4 nights a week for most of the year after a few initial striped series. But the US questions did seem much easier. Then in daytime series the jackpot was only won twice in the first series and only once after which was a ‘must be won thing’.
With both the overexposure and the frequency of top prize winners, I'm not surprised in the least that the original version ended so soon.
Just watching an interview on YouTube with Celador boss Paul Smith from 2013. He mentions that the bean counters at ITV, a few weeks before the first show, began to get very panicky about the exposure to the network of giving away a million pounds and what could happen if people kept winning it. He says that ITV initially proposed that after the first millionaire they'd then give away 500k as the top prize, then 250k. You couldn't make it up! He eventually persuaded them that human nature would prohibit the majority of people from going for big money if there was any chance they didn't definitely know the answer.
Having watched rather a lot of WWTBAM clips over the last week, it just reminded me how brilliantly entertaining the show was in the early days. It was partly because of the format and presentation that was very different from previous fast-moving quiz shows, but mainly down to Chris Tarrant's affable style and commentary. The new shows with Clarkson are rather less enjoyable and more downbeat in comparison.
It's hard how you can re-ignite the publics excitement for a format that's 22 years old. Indeed it was the anguish of real people winning life changing sums of money which more or less sold it from the off. The Clarkson editions are already losing their appeal, and indeed they're already resorting to celebrity editions.
An idea of mine similar to the Super Millionaire format but not quite so extreme as giving away $10m is offering the option of going Double or Quits at £32k. So all the amounts thereafter are doubled (or thereabouts) to £125k, £250k, £500k, £1m & £2m. So it becomes one question easier to win the million - as with all the other amounts so the incentive is there - and there's a new £2m prize at the top.
But the risk is much greater as if you lose - there's no second safe haven so you'd go all the way back to £1000. It'd give the viewers suspenseful viewing should they decide to go for it given the amounts are higher but the drops are much higher too. Millionaire could also reclaim its crown as UK TV's biggest cash prize should they ever give the £2m away.
:-(
A former member
I think Clarkson has given it a new lease of life. If anything the problem it suffers from is one that they talked about in Quiz, that the contestants all seem to be pretty clever middle-aged white men. We need more “help me daaaaad” contestants.