Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

***Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?*** is a Transmanian television primetime quiz game show mostly based on the format of the British game show of the same name created by David Briggs, Steven Knight & Mike Whitehill and developed for the RT and licensed by Big Synergy. The show features a quiz competition with contestants attempting to win a top prize of RTÐ1,000,000 by correctly answering 15 successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. To assist each contestant who takes part, they are given lifelines to use, may walk away with the money they already have won if they wish not to risk answering a question, and are provided with a safety net that gives them a guaranteed cash prize if they give an incorrect answer, provided they reach a specific milestone in the quiz.

The original RT version premiered on the ATN TV network on September 6, 1999, and ended on June 23, 2007. Cody Thompson was the host and was produced by Big Synergy RT in association with Celador Productions Ltd. It returned to television in January 2008 with newer gameplay.

The program has endured as one of the longest-running and most successful international variants in the *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?* franchise.

## Format

### Auditioning

Members of the public wishing to apply for the quiz show are provided with calling/texting a premium-rate number or submitting an application via the show's ATN website. Once an application is made, production staff select an episode's contestants through a combination of random selection, and a potential contestant's ability to answer a set of test questions based on general knowledge.

Once a contestant has auditioned for a part on the program and filming takes place, they undertake a preliminary round entitled "Fastest Finger First" - the group of contestants seeking a chance to play the main game of the show must answer a single question correctly and do so faster than their opponents. Initially, in most pilots, the round required contestants to provide the correct answer to a question, but in the series, they will be tasked with putting four answers in the correct order stated within the question (i.e. earliest to latest). The contestant who answers a question correctly, and in the fastest time, moves on towards playing the main game; in the event that no one answers the question correctly, a new question is asked, while if two or more contestants give the correct answer at the same time, there is a tiebreaker question to determine who proceeds to the main game. This round is primarily used to determine the new contestant for the main game and can often be used more than once in an episode.

After completing the preliminary round, the contestant now begins the main game, tackling a series of increasingly difficult questions, which offer progressively higher sums of money, up to the top prize. The questions are randomly chosen from a list of generated questions based on general knowledge. For each question, there are four options to choose from. During the game, the contestant is allowed to use a set of lifelines to help them with a question at any time, and two safety nets: if a contestant gets a question wrong but had reached a designated cash value during their game, they will leave with that amount as their prize. If a contestant is unsure about a question they are facing, they are allowed to leave the game at that point with the cash amount they had already won. While the initial questions are generally easy, the subsequent ones after it require the contestant to confirm that their answer/decision is final, at which point it is locked in and cannot be reversed. As a rule, the host is not shown the correct answer, until a contestant has given their answer. If an episode is reaching the end of its allotted time, an audio cue is triggered to highlight this; contestants still playing the main game are left to wait until filming for the next episode begins before they can continue, though this is not the case for special editions of the show, such as celebrity episodes.

### Lifelines

During a contestant's game, they may make use of a set of lifelines (originally helping hands) to provide assistance on a question. Throughout the course of the show's history, these lifelines involve the following:

* **50:50**: Two random incorrect answers are eliminated by the computer, leaving the correct answer and the one remaining incorrect answer, thus granting the contestant a 50/50 chance of answering the question correctly.

* **Phone a Friend**: The contestant calls one of their friends and has 30 seconds to read the question and answers to them. The friend uses the leftover time to offer an answer.

* **Ask the Audience**: Audience members use keypads to vote on what they believe to be the correct answer to the question. The percentage of each option selected by the audience is displayed to the contestant after this vote.

### Money tree

With the pilot episodes taped between April and May 1999, the payout structure was as follows: first going from Ð50 to Ð150 in increments of Ð50, then from Ð250 to Ð32,000 with the dolland value doubling for each new question, and finally from Ð62,500 to Ð500,000 with the dolland value doubling for each new question.

#### *Millionaire (1999-2001)*

Starting with the first episode airing on September 3, 1999, and ending in 2001, the payout structure was as follows: first going from Ð100 to Ð300 in increments of Ð100, then from Ð500 to Ð64,000 with the pound value doubling for each new question, and finally from Ð125,000 to Ð1 million with the dolland value doubling for each new question.

#### *2001 - 2007*

Starting in 2001 as the show's 2nd anniversary, the payout structure was as follows: first going from Ð100 to Ð300 in increments of Ð100, then from Ð500 to Ð2,000 with the dolland value doubling for each new question, then from Ð5,000 to Ð75,000 and finally from Ð125,000 to Ð1 million with the dolland value doubling for each new question.

In both cases, the values are not cumulative; for example, if the contestant answers the first 2 questions correctly, he or she wins Ð200, not Ð300 (i.e. Ð100 + Ð200). The format focused on contestants answering 15 questions, with two safety nets placed at Ð1,000 and Ð32,000 (later Ð40,000) respectively, and the use of three standard lifelines.

## Season overview

### Original series (1999-2007)

#### Season 1 (1999-2000)

Total series: 4
Total episodes: 44
Ratings: 9.82 m.

#### Season 2 (2000-2001)

Total series: 3
Total episodes: