Image Credit: Dario Cantatore/Getty ImagesThe ninth season of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire premiered Monday, and if you watched, you probably noticed some pretty drastic changes. Yesterday, the show went to some pretty giant lengths to promote the new season and game changes. And when I say giant, I’m referring to the giant piggy bank that served as a backdrop for the live Millionaire-style game that took place in Times Square. Four radio contest winners duked it out for $10,000 by answering a series of multiple choice questions. After the competition, all four participants got a fast track audition for the chance to appear as a contestant on the actual show.
Millionaire host Meredith Vieira was on hand to deliver the final questions of the challenge. After she awarded a $10,000 check to the winner, she talked with us about this season’s changes. “I wasn’t sold, to be honest with you, in the beginning,” she said. “I thought, why would you change something that seems to work?” But after the producers played the game for her, she came around to the new look of the game. “After nine years, games get predictable, so there’s always a risk when you change things, but I think it’s been worth it,” Vieira said. “The game is edgier now. It’s far less predictable, and there’s a lot more risk-taking.”
Here’s a breakdown of the new changes:
- Round 1 — Questions and Dollar Values Randomized: You’re used to seeing the questions get progressively harder as contestants attempt to reach the $1 million mark. Now, the first round will feature 10 questions valued from $100 to $25,000. Before play begins, the order of the questions and dollar value will be randomly shuffled. That means the easiest question could have a $25,000 value attached to it. Conversely, a harder question could be worth only $100. “It does something to your head,” Vieira said. “In the old system you knew the first questions were going to be easy. Now you’re never quite so sure.”
- Round 2 — Classic Millionaire: After making it through the first round, contestants are guaranteed at least $25,000. The $50,000 question is no more, and only four questions remain valued at $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, and $1,000,000.
- New Lifeline — Jump the Question: A contestant can rely on this lifeline to avoid answering a question. In doing so, he or she will also forfeit the dollar amount attached to the question. Contestants will get two of these lifelines, along with the classic Ask the Audience.
- No More Hot Seat: The hot seat is gone! That means Vieira and the contestant will stand throughout the show. The questions and winnings are now displayed on an 18-foot-wide HD projection screen. Vieira wasn’t too happy that she’d have to stand in heels the whole time, but she’s come around. “I’ve been OK. Every time we have a commercial break, and I feel like sitting I can,” she said. “But most of the time I don’t want to. You get caught up in it.”
So what do you think about the new format of the show, PopWatchers? Will you still be watching? Or will you take your game show loyalty to something else now that they’ve implemented these new changes?
This sounds horrible. Why change it when it works? Never watching again with these changes.
You sound like the type to watch this with a bunch of bon-bons stuffed to your face in a dingy bathrobe and fuzzy slippers with old Cathy cartoons splayed in the home.
LMAO yeah, talk about being “open to change”
UGh this sounds awful!
This sounds awesome. Change is good. I can’t wait to watch it again with these changes.
I got bored half thee way through.
Sounds like it will be more interesting. I always changed the channel if it was at the beginning of a game since the easy questions were so boring to watch.
Couldn’t you get a more flattering pic of Meredith without all those rinks!
I just happened to catch some of the show today, which I never watch. I was wondering why the guy was able to just not answer a question. This post turned out to be quite timely for me! But I’ll go back to not watching it frankly. I like Meredith Viera, but I really wish she wouldn’t do this show. Give the job to a comedian or somebody who doesn’t already have a job…
Wow can’t wait i love learning from this show stuff i never knew .
it is sad to hear the host say GREAT you have 25,000 in your bank YEAH BZZZ then if they decide to stop you take all but a thousand or 100.00 HEY CHINAS BEEN MAKING items for the U.S.A TOO long were starting to act like them ONCE money is in the bank it is the contetonts FINAL AWNSER
This show is still on? I thought it was canceled long ago. Lol. After Regis stopped hosting, it got extremely dumb.
my wife and myself used to watch millionaire every day and enjoyed it,however this new format is not enjoyable.we wonder how long it will last?
The core of the game is still intact, you have to answer questions to win it all. Just the journey to the top is a new route. I don’t think it’s a losing proposition at all to randomize amounts and categories. It adds something that the old game didn’t have, unpredictability. The only thing you knew for sure in the old game was that the questions got progressively harder.
So who is the idiot that came up with the new format working for now? What in the world were you people thinking (or smoking)? This is HORRIBLE!!!! I expect this will be the end of Millionaire.
I hate the new Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.It is a totally different show.Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was one of my favorite T.V. shows.I am not going to be watching it anymore.
The new format is awful. Could they get any sillier? Dancing like and idiot and clapping hands
directly into a microphone so that our ears are hurting – yes, I could butn the volume down but I
would have to turn it back up when
the show starts up again. Don’t like the new format of winning and losing, don’t like anything about it. Wont be watching it again if this continues. Go back to what works. And, by the way, Meredith, on the old format, too many times you “teased” a contestant like he had lost the question, when actually he had won, yet you were
merciless in stringing someone along and then “boom” he had actually won. Not funny, not cute, not entertaining from where I’m sitting. Doesn’t matter now though, I won’t be watching unless you trash this new format. Shame!