Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (US game show)
| Who Wants to Be a Millionaire | |
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| Genre | Game show |
| Created by | David Briggs Mike Whitehill Steven Knight |
| Developed by | Michael Davies |
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| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of seasons | 18 (3 on ABC, 15 in syndication) |
| No. of episodes | ABC (Original): 363 Syndicated: 1,800(as of October 24, 2012) ABC (Super Millionaire): 12 ABC (10th Anniversary Special): 11 |
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| Location(s) | Las Vegas, Nevada |
| Running time | 39–48 minutes (ABC) 19–25 minutes (syndication) |
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| Original network |
ABC (1999–2002, 2004, 2009) Syndication (2002–present) |
| Picture format |
480i (SDTV) (1999–2011) 720p/1080i (HDTV) (2011–present) |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original release |
ABC August 16, 1999 – June 27, 2002 Syndication September 16, 2002 – present |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (often informally called Millionaire) is an American television game show based on the same-titled British program and developed for the United States by Michael Davies. The show features a quiz competition in which contestants attempt to win a top prize of U.S. $1,000,000 by answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty (although, for a time, most of the questions were of random difficulty). The program has endured as one of the longest-running and most successful international variants in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? franchise.
The original U.S. version aired on ABC from August 16, 1999, to June 27, 2002, and was hosted by Regis Philbin. The daily syndicated version of the show began airing on September 16, 2002, and was hosted for eleven seasons by Meredith Vieira until May 31, 2013. Later hosts included Cedric the Entertainer in the 2013–14 season, Terry Crews in the following season (2014–15), and Chris Harrison, who began hosting on September 14, 2015.
As the first U.S. network game show to offer a million-dollar top prize, the show made television history by becoming one of the highest-rated game shows in the history of American television. The U.S. Millionaire has won seven Daytime Emmy Awards, and TV Guide ranked it No. 6 in its 2013 list of the 60 greatest game shows of all time.
At its core, the game is a quiz competition in which the goal is to correctly answer a series of fourteen (originally fifteen) consecutive multiple-choice questions. The questions are of increasing difficulty, except in the 2010–15 format overhaul, where the contestants were faced with a round of ten questions of random difficulty, followed by a round of four questions of increasing difficulty. Each question is worth a specified amount of money; the amounts are cumulative in the first round, but not in the second. If the contestant gives a wrong answer to any question, their game is over and their winnings are reduced (or increased, in the first two questions) to $1,000 for tier-one questions, $5,000 for tier-two questions, and $50,000 for tier-three questions. However, the contestant has the option of "walking away" without giving an answer after being presented with a question, in which case the game ends and the contestant is guaranteed to walk away with all the money they have previously received. With the exception of the shuffle format, upon correctly answering questions five and ten, contestants are guaranteed at least the amount of prize money associated with that level. If the contestant gives an incorrect answer, their winnings drop down to the last milestone achieved. Since 2015, if the contestant answers a question incorrectly before reaching question five, he or she leaves with $1,000, even on the first question that is worth only $500. For celebrities, the minimum guarantee for their nominated charities is $10,000. Prior to the shuffle format, a contestant left with nothing if (s)he answered a question incorrectly before reaching the first milestone. In the shuffle format era, contestants who incorrectly answered a question had their winnings reduced to $1,000 in round one and $25,000 in round two.
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