“Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” cancelled after 20 years

[LM117]

I used to watch it often during it's early years.

https://people.com/tv/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-ending-after-nearly-20-years/

[jp the roadgeek]

The Regis version was a thrice weekly regular.  I remember being in bars and people asking the bartender to put it on instead of a game.

[PHLBOS]

I used to watch it often during it's early years.

I'm assuming you're referring to the Regis Philbin era.  That's when I was watching it.

The monochrome look (ties that were in the same color as his shirts) and the catch-phrase "(Is that your) final answer?" will always be his trademarks IMHO.

[jeffandnicole]

The Regis version was a thrice weekly regular.  I remember being in bars and people asking the bartender to put it on instead of a game.

Didn't that start as a once-weekly show, but once they saw the ratings draw they added a lot more shows each week?

In the what's-old-is-new-again department, it was unique to air a primetime game show, which greatly helped it's popularity.

[LM117]

I used to watch it often during it's early years.

I'm assuming you're referring to the Regis Philbin era.  That's when I was watching it.

The monochrome look (ties that were in the same color as his shirts) and the catch-phrase "(Is that your) final answer?" will always be his trademarks IMHO.

Yep. That was when it was at it's best. Terry Crews was the worst host, IMO.

[MisterSG1]

The Regis version was a thrice weekly regular.  I remember being in bars and people asking the bartender to put it on instead of a game.

Didn't that start as a once-weekly show, but once they saw the ratings draw they added a lot more shows each week?

In the what's-old-is-new-again department, it was unique to air a primetime game show, which greatly helped it's popularity.

Not exactly,

Millionaire, at least in the US, started out as a two week special towards the end of August 1999. The show was of course incredibly popular, and these episodes except the Saturday episodes were all a half hour a show.

The show came back for another two weeks in November of 1999, and on November 19, John Carpenter famously won the grand prize on the question about Laugh In and using only his phone a friend, to let his parents know he was going to win the million.

In January of 2000, it moved to the three times a week, hour long shows that you speak of started, and this continued with Regis until the end of June 2002. Meredith Viera hosted a syndicated version thereafter that fall until 2013.

Regis came back twice to host millionaire in prime time, in 2004 for Super Millionaire which had a grand prize of 10 million but had insanely difficult questions. He also came back for the 10th anniversary of the show in Aug 2009 hosting daily shows like he did back in Aug 1999.


This reminds me sort of off topic, but I was a huge fan and still do miss what many called a complete knockoff of millionaire that FOX started in Nov 2000 called "Greed" , it was more dark, more interesting, perhaps it was ahead of its time. But that show only lasted weekly until the middle of July 2000.