Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Review

In 2008, the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire made some changes to help contestants win the grand prize, which has remained elusive since Nancy Christy became a millionaire over five years ago (May 8, 2003).

Name	Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
Original Run	September 2002 to present
Host	Meredith Vieira
Length	Half hour
Currently On	Syndicated (weekdays at 12:30 p.m. on WCVB in Boston, Massachusetts; check your local listings)
IMDB	Main entry

Description: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire debuted in the U.K. in 1998 and moved to the U.S. in 1999 with Regis Philbin hosting. Meredith Vieira took over in 2002 for the syndicated version, which dropped the Fastest Finger contest for selecting contestants. In 2008, the show briefly used a 10-question format, starting players with a guaranteed $1,000, then went to the format presented here.

• # of Questions: 15 ($100-$200-$300-$500-$1,000-$2,000-$4,000-$8,000-$16,000-$25,000-$50,000-$100,000-$250,000-$500,000-$1,000,000). The category names of all of the questions are now provided to the contestant at the beginning of the game. This can greatly impact the use your lifelines and the decision to go on or quit.
• # of Lifelines: 4
  • Ask the Audience: The original lifeline remains especially useful for lower-valued, entertainment, and current events questions.
  • Phone a Friend: The contestant's three potential choices are now displayed with their pictures on the screen before the thirty-second telephone call is made.
  • Double Dip: This new lifeline, which gives the contestant two shots at the answer to a question, had been introduced during Who Wants to Be a Super Millionaire in 2004 and replaced the less useful 50/50 lifeline (which, by the way, was intentionally unhelpful during Regis's run but supposedly completely random during Meredith's).
  • Ask the Expert: This new lifeline, earned by correctly answering the $1,000 question, replaced the Switch the Question lifeline. Bill Nye was this week's celebrity expert.
• Timer: A clock has been added to speed up the show. The timer, which is stopped while the question is being read (but not the choices) and when lifelines are being used, has the following limits:
  • $100 to $1,000 questions: 15 seconds
  • $2,000 to $25,000 questions: 30 seconds
  • $50,000 to $500,000 questions: 45 seconds
  • $1,000,000 question: 45 seconds PLUS all time saved on previous questions.

Conclusion: The recent modifications to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire will certainly increase the chance of someone winning big both by speeding up gameplay, therefore allowing more contestants per show, and by providing more useful lifelines. Unfortunately, the quality of the contestant pool will remain lower than during Regis's version as long as auditions are mostly restricted to New York City and the prizes aren't raised (the second guaranteed payout used to be $32,000, so figuring in inflation, it should have been raised to $40,000 instead of dropped to $25,000). The next logical step will be to reduce the difficulty of the questions, so I hope there's a million dollar winner soon before that happens.