"Analyse the techniques used to create tension and viewer enjoyment in 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'"

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Matthew Foley

“Analyse the techniques used to create tension and viewer enjoyment in ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’”

The word ‘quiz’ has a number of different possible origins. One of these is that it has originated from ‘Qui es?’, translated to “Who are you?” from Latin. The word ‘quiz’ was then incorporated within a radio show to begin with and later, television, to become the ‘quiz show’. The quiz show itself has been around for over seventy years and has progressed a great deal from the radio show promoting pocket soups to the instantly recognisable dominant question/answer sessions of today, now offering prizes up to a million pounds.

During the latter part of the 1990s and the early part of the 2000s, quiz shows began to offer larger amounts of money than before, such as, ‘The Vault’, ‘The Chair’, and ‘The Weakest Link’, although, by far the biggest amount being given out on these quiz shows were on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’

This essay will focus on ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’, in particular, analysing the techniques used to create tension and viewer enjoyment in this show.

        This show was first aired on ITV on September 4th 1998, and is hosted by Chris Tarrant. The programme’s Unique Selling Point is the fact that it gives out a maximum prize of one million pounds, one of the largest prizes available on any quiz show. Also, it is continually stressed that anyone can win this prize money. This show has been extremely popular and the fact that it has had numerous celebrity special editions just highlights this point.

‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ has a very simple concept in the question/answer session. The questions themselves span from £100 to £1,000,000, and they flow consecutively through difficulty, meaning that the easiest questions are the £100 and £200 questions, with the most difficult questions being £500,000 and £1,000,000.

        The preliminary round of the show is called ‘Fastest Finger First’. This title has been ingeniously used in that the alliteration in the title has been used to emphasise the speed needed in this round, as it is very short, approximately 10 seconds in length. This is tense because it is extremely short, forcing the contestants to act quickly under pressure.

In the show, there are milestones to aid the contestants in their attempted

progression to a million pounds. These currently stand at £1,000 and £32,000, and are a form of security for the contestants as they are guaranteed to leave with at least that amount of money, even if they happen to answer a question incorrectly after progressing past that milestone. However, these also create tension as there is a large amount of pressure placed on the contestants to reach the next milestone, meaning that the contestants know that they will receive a larger guaranteed amount of money if they reach the next milestone, therefore placing pressure on them to reach these goals.

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        The contestants do not have to reach these milestones purely by using their

general knowledge. They are given three ‘Lifelines’ to aid them. These are called ‘Ask

the Audience’, ’50:50’ and ‘Phone a Friend’. These make the show tense and exciting

in their unique ways. Firstly, ‘Ask the Audience’ increases tension as the contestants

can be dependant on trusting strangers. It can either help or hinder the contestants by

either lulling them into a false sense of security when the audience gives them the

wrong answer, or aiding them by reinforcing their choice. Secondly, ...

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