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Why Winning $1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Syndicated) Was Almost Impossible
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View Reddit by occono – View Source
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Why Winning $1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Syndicated) Was Almost Impossible
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View Reddit by occono – View Source
Norm McDonald almost did it. Came real close
Tl;dr: the questions on the syndicated version of the show were insanely harder than the original.
The fake out the contestant by saying “oh gosh, oh no…” routine really gets old fast.
Is it because they wanted to keep their money and not give it away? I bet it’s that.
That was a long ass video to just say “because the questions were harder.”
I used to watch this show (the version with Meredith) as a kid any time I was home sick, that is until I saw an episode where a guy had chosen the right answer and Meredith basically wouldnt let him say ‘final answer’ and pressured him into changing his answer to a wrong one and lost. I know that was her job but even as a kid I found it incredibly distasteful and never watched it again
I think some $1 million questions are way too hard and more suitable for the $2.5 million or above in the Super Millionaire version. Stevy Perry is an example; his last question would probably be worth 5 or 10 million if it were in Super Millionaire.
I watch live when the first guy ever one a million. I knew the answer to every question but the second to last
Dang, Nancy Christie was a real “Slumdog Millionaire” situation where so much of her life overlapped with the questions.
I was wondering where the spike in views was coming from. Thanks for the share!
To all the folks in the comments wondering why the video is so long when the answer is simply “the questions were harder:” the whole point of this series I’ve been doing isn’t *just* to answer the question, it’s also to revisit the few who *were* able to break through and win the top prize and how they did it, as well as those that came close but ended up falling just short.
The video doesn’t really answer the question at all. I thought there would be some stats, or psychology delved into but it just talked about people not making it. No reasons “why”
When the show first came on in 1999, winning a million was a pretty big deal. With how inflation has been, $1m in 1999 is now $1.85m in 2023. So a “who wants to be a $2m-aire show would be more appropriate if they re-launch prime time”.
There’s a reason why prizes are usually better on network game shows than syndicated ones; the budgets are bigger on a network show.
Syndicated WWTBAM didn’t have the budget to pay the big prize. But the whole premise of the show was having a million dollar prize. If the show didn’t have “Millionaire” in the title, the top prize would probably be $100k.
In the wake of the popularity of Regis’s ABC WWTBAM (and Survivor’s million dollar probably too, probably), then syndicated game show ratings leader “Wheel of Fortune” added the million dollar wedge to the wheel. And it was hard AF to actually win the prize. The wedge was only one segment big so it was hard to land on. You had to win the puzzle; you had to win the game. And you had to win the final round. You have to land on the million dollars in a spin with other final round prizes. Most of the items the wheel landed on were won if you won the puzzle. WOF marketed the prize like crazy knowing it wasn’t going to be awarding the prize that many times. In the twenty years they’ve had the million, three contestants (and one celebrity) have won the prize on Wheel. They do 150-200 episodes a season of the show. And WOF would have a bigger budget than a lower rated show like WWTBAM.
Pretty easy to win gold case though.