Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers very large cash prizes for correctly answering successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by the British production company Celador. The maximum cash prize (in the original British version) is one million pounds. Most international versions offer a top prize of one million units of the local currency, though the actual value of the prize varies widely, depending on the currency's exchange rate. In at least one country (the United States) the top prizes are no longer cash, but annuities.The programme originated in the United Kingdom, where it is hosted by Chris Tarrant. It is based on a format devised by David Briggs, who, along with Steve Knight and Mike Whitehill, devised a number of the promotional games for Chris Tarrant's breakfast show on Capital FM radio. The original working title for the show was Cash Mountain. When it first aired in the UK on September 4, 1998, it was a surprising twist on the gameshow genre. Only one contestant plays at a time (similar to some radio quizzes), and the emphasis is on suspense rather than speed. There is no time limit to answer questions, and contestants are given the question before they must decide whether to attempt an answer.
The show is named after Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? , a 1956 song by Cole Porter from the film High Society which emphasised the desirability of love over material possessions: "Who wants to be a millionaire? I don't. / And I don't 'cause all I want is you."[citation needed]
In 2000, a board game based on the hit television series of the same name was released by Pressman Toy Corp.
In March 2006, Celador announced that it was seeking to sell the worldwide rights to the show, together with the UK programme library, as the first phase of a sell-off of the company's format and production divisions. Dutch company 2waytraffic has now acquired Millionaire and the rest of Celador's programme library.
New format of the show
On August 13, 2007, it was announced that the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is changing its format, cutting the number of questions it takes to reach the £1 million jackpot. The prize money will start at £500 rather than £100 and there will be only 12 questions to replace the former 15. After reaching £1,000, the prize fund will increase to £2,000, £5,000, £10,000, £20,000 and £50,000, which is the second "safe haven", previously £32,000. The first set of contestants to face the new rules were comedians Jon Culshaw and John Thomson in a charity special, shown on ITV on 18 August 2007.[1]
On August 13, 2007, it was announced that the UK version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is changing its format, cutting the number of questions it takes to reach the £1 million jackpot. The prize money will start at £500 rather than £100 and there will be only 12 questions to replace the former 15. After reaching £1,000, the prize fund will increase to £2,000, £5,000, £10,000, £20,000 and £50,000, which is the second "safe haven", previously £32,000. The first set of contestants to face the new rules were comedians Jon Culshaw and John Thomson in a charity special, shown on ITV on 18 August 2007.[1]
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