Is the show Who wants to be a millionaire for real? How come the lifeline a contestant chooses always happens to be someone who is an expert on whatever the question is about? huh?
Have you ever watched the show?? BTW…wrong forum.
Ollie,
The players have multiple “phone-a-friends”, many times they aren’t even well known acquaintances to the player. For example, if you don’t have a friend who is well versed in art, you might hit up an art professor at the local university. Based on the question, the player then picks which of their “phone-a-friends” is most likely to know the answer.
And besides which at least when I have been watching the “friend” has bombed out and not known the answer about half the time.
First of all, WELCOME TO THE BOARDS!
Second: Contestants are allowed to pick 5 (I believe) friends/people they can call. You need to find those people, then get them to be home during the time you tape the show. It’s not even certain people will call you but I suppose theres some thrill in “waiting for that call”. So I’d assume you would choose 5 people that are experts on subjects that are more likely to come up such as art, drama, books, films, you get the jist…
I was on the show (I was never the fastest during the fast fingers round, never made it to the hot seat, never answered any questions, and didn’t win a cent), so I can tell you this:
When a contestant is selected, he’s told to pick 5 phone friends. He’s advised to choose people with very different fields of expertise. So, if you were selected, you might pick one friend who’s an engineer and knows a lot about science, one friend who’s a sports fanatic, one who’s very arty, one teenager who knows a lot about current pop culture, and one bookworm who knows all the classics of literature.
Taping began about 5 PM Eastern time, and usually lasted about 2 hours… but sometimes, it could take longer, due to technical difficulties. In any event, you had to tell your 5 friends to be available by their phones from 5-8 PM Eastern time. You then had to provide the show’s producers with their phone numbers. The producers would call each of them, to make sure they were available.
As soon as a contestant wins the fast finger round, the producers get his 5 friends on the phone, and the 5 friends are kept on hold during the entire time they’re playing. When a contestant gets a question he can’t answer, he chooses the friend he thjnks is most likely to know the answer.
At that point, Regis makes a big show of “dialing” the friend, but he’s not really “dialing” at all. The friend is already waiting on hold.
In my case, filming ended at 7 PM, and I was back at my hotel by 7:15. I had to call all my friends and tell them, “I didn’t make it. You can stop waiting by the phone now. Thanks anyway.”