“Millionaire: Hot Seat” Comes to Australia in Two Weeks

Since production company 2waytraffic has taken control of the hit quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, they’ve been toying around with different ways to implement and use the format.  The first was a spinoff called 50:50 which was based around that Lineline and, quite frankly, blew.  The newest comes from a trial run in Italy but Australia as well as others have picked it up.  It’s the new fast paced, multiplayer edition of the show called Millionaire: Hot Seat.  For our Australian friends, the show debuts Monday, April 20th, at 5:30PM on Channel Nine, directly against Deal or No Deal.  Deal‘s been a steamroller for basically anything else in its path so we’ll see how this does.  For the non-Aussie friends, the rules.

Six players line up to play the game.  Same 15 question chain to $1,000,000.  The player out in the Hot Seat answers questions under a time limit like before: 15 seconds for the first five, 30 for six through ten, and 45 for the final questions with an appropriate amount of time for the final one.  No walking away.  If the player is wrong, the top prize is knocked off the chain, whatever it is at that moment, he or she is eliminated from the game, and the next player in line comes out to try their luck.  Each player can Pass once a game which will let them move to the back of the line and let the next person in line play the question.  You can’t repass a question.  If a question that has been passed is answered incorrect, the money chain does not lose its top value, though.  The final surviving player wins the money.

It sounds OK as a show by itself.  But if this were any other production company’s show we’d be screaming it’s a total ripoff.  2waytraffic lucked out by owning Millionaire and they can basically use the branding of that show for this and avoid cries of ripoff.  It’s a spinoff instead.  I’m not exactly keen on the idea.  Millionaire‘s not a dead show and people are going to remember the old format and wonder where it went.  I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, no.  I just think it’s too soon and a blatant usage of the Millionaire branding to cash in whatever dumb viewers that don’t realize it’s not the same old game they know and love.  Plus nothing has come close to beating Deal or No Deal. Not even Million Dollar Wheel of Fortune.  We’ll see if this does anything.  And you know we’ll have video when we can.