‘Millionaire’ Trumpets Two More Top Winners

Add two more millionaires to the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” club, and they couldn’t come at a better time.

The ABC program, which is taped in advance, said it had two top-prize winners in the space of a week (the first, Kim Hunt, a math teacher from Collierville, Tenn., won Thursday night). That brings its total to six, out of about 250 total contestants in the course of its first 11 months on the air in the U.S.

Producer Michael Davies, announcing “another two American lives changed for the good” at a New York press conference, said the new winners provide some dramatically emotional moments, as well as a chance for a “call out to our regular viewers” at a time when they may not be tuning in to each and every episode of what is currently a three-night-per-week show, soon to be four nights a week in the fall.

The show, Davies said, is undergoing an “interesting transition. We were an event program. Now ‘Millionaire’ is becoming a regular television series. We’re not the massive thing, totally different, totally reinventing television. That mantle has been passed on.”

Indeed, CBS’ summer series “Survivor” has taken some of the novelty out of “Millionaire,” beating it in head-to-head competition. Host Regis Philbin said the “Millionaire” team knew a “stunt program” would eventually come along that might beat “Millionaire,” but he still managed to get in a shot at “Survivor,” noting that once he finally saw it he was expecting more than “throwing spears at a banana,” adding: “It’s not for me.”

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Davies said he considered whether minting too many millionaires might devalue the show but decided the current rate is right. With all the effort that contestants go to in order to get on, he said, “I have to produce a show where contestants have a fighting chance.”

As to the low number of minority contestants, Davies said he remains “disappointed, concerned and frustrated” but noted that the blind call-in qualification process for selecting candidates had been scrutinized and no solution was found. The producers have discussed ways to recruit minority and female players, and Davies did note that more women have been getting into the show’s “hot seat.”

Davies also said celebrity episodes of the program would return in November.