Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (UK game show)
| Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Created by | David Briggs Steve Knight Mike Whitehill |
| Presented by | Chris Tarrant |
| Theme music composer |
Keith Strachan Matthew Strachan Nick Magnus (2007–14) |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 30 |
| No. of episodes | 592 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | David Briggs |
| Location(s) | Elstree Studios |
| Running time | 30–75 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
Celador (1998–2007) 2waytraffic (2007–10) Victory Television (2011–14) |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Picture format |
4:3 (1998–99) 16:9 (1999–2014) |
| Original release | 4 September 1998 – 11 February 2014 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a British television quiz show that offers a maximum cash prize of one million pounds for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. One contestant played at a time and originally had no time limit to answer questions. Contestants were presented with the question and possible answers before they decided whether to attempt an answer, use one of their lifelines (50:50, Ask The Audience or Phone a Friend (or later on, Switch)), or walk away with what they have already won.
The show first aired on 4 September 1998 and aired its final episode on 11 February 2014. It was presented by Chris Tarrant and produced by Victory Television for the ITV network. It was based on a format devised by David Briggs, who, along with Steven Knight and Mike Whitehill, devised a number of the promotional games for Chris Tarrant's breakfast show on Capital FM radio. The original working title for the show was Cash Mountain.
One of the most significant shows in British popular culture, it was ranked 23rd in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. The show has been exported to many other countries, all of which follow the same general format. Rights to both the format and all UK episodes of the show were put up for sale by Celador in March 2006, as the first step towards the sale of Celador's formats division. These were acquired by the Dutch company 2waytraffic. 2waytraffic was in turn acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2008.
On 22 October 2013, it was announced that Tarrant had decided to quit the show after 15 years. Because of this, ITV decided to cancel Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? after the contract finished, stating that there would not be any further specials beyond the ones that had already been planned. Tarrant's final live celebrity edition aired on 19 December 2013. On the day before (18 December), Tarrant pre-recorded two other celebrity episodes to be shown in early 2014. The final episode, a clip show entitled "Chris' Final Answer", aired on 11 February 2014.
...
Wikipedia