New Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I thought the Live show was fantastic. It was the feeling like when it first started except for the Evans part. They made a fantastic effort with the show, Chris Tarrant handled it brilliantly, and the effort they went through with the studio and different camera angles was brilliant.

Well done to the team involved.

Yes, I thought it was an excellent show - could have been tweaked to use all the musical elements and Ann Widdecombe could have been a bit quicker or less chat to her - but it worked very well! I wonder if they will do it again this coming year??

I expect they might - it got 6.51m compared to the usual ~ 3.5m - 4m it usually gets. Probably a bit to do with the fact that that it was the build up to Christmas plus had weak competition in a New Tricks repeat (3.78m). But still good nonetheless.

It was the best rating for Millionaire since the Coronation Street special in August 2008 (6.4 million).
and best rating for a Christmas celebrity special since Christmas Day 2005 (6.5 million).

Even if it lost say 1m against a stronger BBC1 schedule, it would still be ~ 5.5m, which would be well up on what it has been doing for the last couple of years.

Was there a reason they couldn't use all of the music? There was quite a few odd silences especially in the early questions.

The live episode is currently being repeated on ITV2+1 in it's original form. They haven't covered up the phone-in graphics which only have a closing date of 'as announced in the show'.

This kind of thing really shouldn't matter, stupid people SHOULD be charged for the call and be grateful for the lesson in common sense but broadcasters are normally so careful about things like this. Once they make the assumption that viewers are morons, they can't suddenly expect us to develop thinking skills overnight. To be fair, it probably doesn't help that the EPG still calls the show 'live' in both the programme name and description.

The show is repeated again at 3:45 (ITV2). It will be interesting to see if they manage to get an edited version on air by then. I expect we will see a page on itv.com offering refunds in due course too.

No more civilian shows... only celebrity specials.

Daily Mirror

I think that's quite sad. I really did enjoy watching the last series with the clock - it added pace to the programme - and I hadn't watched the programme regularly since around 2002...

The live specials will maybe work but it would be nice if some of the technical issues such as the music were sorted out next time.

Good old Daily Mirror. Not sure how their reporter managed to watch the 'live spectacular' celebrity special on 'Christmas Eve' - as it was actually transmitted on Thursday 23rd December.
Does no-one actually check facts before regurgitating them anymore?

Typical tabloid headline as well

MILLIONAIRE AXED!

Some parts of the set changed in last night's Millionaire. New computer stand and seems the broken mirrors have gone from under the glass floor. Music again was a bit of a disaster.

I haven't seen it all yet but I'm yet to see a 'lights down' which symbolised Millionaire!!

Such a shame.

What happened at the end of Patsy Palmer's round when the klaxon sounded? At first Chris Tarrant started to read out the next question even after the klaxon sounded (Chris began to read the question after a few seconds of silence), then there was a loud noise (almost like when a CD when it sticks on a few seconds of a song) then the klaxon sounded again. Why is there always problems on the live Millionaire?


EDIT : It's on ITV Player video at 48:32

I think it was a case of the klaxon playing and Chris Tarrent not hearing it (silence while he waits for the next question to appear) so they decided to play it again but the sound person wasn't expecting to have to do this so started playing out the wrong sound (sounded like the start of some music to me) by mistake.

There was an odd bit of filling at the end of the programme too. Why did they read out viewers emails? They hadn't asked for emails during the programme had they?

I think Chris Tarrent has become rubbish at handling live television which is odd considering he is hardly new to it. Someone needs to tell him that there is no such lifeline as 'Stop the clock' which two contestants tried to use last night and he just repeated 'Stop the clock' as if something should have happened.

Also, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? now seems like an irrelevant questions since if my understanding of the format is correct, it is now not possible for the contestants to win 1 million pounds. The only person who can win the million (or more) is the caller.