Hmmm…
How is it that the call-a-friend life line
people are always there to answer the phone?
What if they’re in the potty?! How long does
the studio audience have to wait while the caller is located?
-Malaka
Biff! Zap! Pow! My first post!
The show is not done live. But all the ifelines are well aware of the time whem the taping will occur. IIRC, the life lines are contacted just before the show goes on the air just to be sure they are in place.
I heard there’s a really smart guy who is trying to become a professional lifeline for a cut of the cash.
A girl
If he’s so smart why doesn’t he go on the show?
Ok… he’s not THAT smart…
Rosie O’Donnell has been a life line a few times and she said that the show called and had her stay near her phone for 3 or 4 hours while they were taping
Never criticize a person until you walk a mile in their shoes… this way when you do criticize them you’ll be a mile away… oh… and you’ll have free shoes. :o)
I don’t. 
“What’s right is only half of what’s wrong
and I want a short-haired girl
Who sometimes wears it twice as long”
George Harrison - Old Brown Shoe
I read an article in TV Guide a while back. They said that the minute someone gets up in the “hot seat,” they call all of their lifelines (I believe that they can pick up to five). Then they keep the lifelines on the phone the whole time that person is in the hot seat.
I was a contestant on WWTBAM, so I can answer this question first-hand (for the record, I was never the fastest during the lightning round, so I never made it to the hot seat, and never got to answer any questions).
Taping starts at 5 PM eastern time, and usually lasts 2 hours or so. If there are technical problems, we were told, it CAN take as long as 3 hours.
So, the ten contestants must provide a list of 5 friends who are willing to serve as lifelines, along with the phone number where they can be reached between 5 and 8 PM. We also have to give the producers a phone number where the lifelines can be reached early in the afternoon. The producers call each of the possible lifelines (50 people in all), ask them a few questions (to make sure that none of them are employed by Disney, ABC or any company connected with the show), and to make sure they’ll be available from 5 to 8 PM. If there is ANY doubt as to whether the lifeline will be at that number, they are disqualified- and the contestant is told well ahead of time that he may not use that lifeline.
As was mentioned earlier, the show is NOT done live. There’s now about a week delay between when a show is taped and when it airs. That’s plenty of time for the producers to edit out anything they want. So, IF I’d made it to the hot seat, and IF I’d had to phone a friend, and IF that friend had gone out to dinner and we just got his answering machine… rest assured, the producers would simply have edited out that portion (EVERY game show’s credits include the disclaimer “portions not affecting the outcome of the game have been edited”), and probably would have allowed me to phone a different friend. SO far, according to producer Michael Davies, that has never happened.
Interestingly, the night I was on, a few of the question/answer segments were re-shot at the end of the taping. That’s because Regis sometimes flubbed the pronunciation of a word or phrase in the question. The contestants answered the questions correctly despite Regis’ goofs, but the producers had Regis ask the questions again, and had the contestants answer again, as if it were for the first time. There was no cheating, mind you- the contestants DID get the question right. But for entertainment purposes (and to make Regis look good), the scenes was re-filmed.
If anybody else has any questions about the nuts and bolts of HOW the show is done, I’d be happy to try to answer them.
The most interesting thing (and the thing EVERY contestant comments upon, the first time they walk into the studio) is just how TINY the studio is! The camera angles (done from a crane) make the studio seem so huge, but it isn’t. The whole set isn’t much larger than an average Manhattan studio apartment!
I do have a question about “Ask the audience”.
Since it seems like each contestant has a few friends or relatives in the audience, won’t all the other contestent’s friends answer the question wrong so that the current contestent will fail and their contestent will have a chance to get in the hot seat?
Does anybody else find Regis Philbin’s enunciation of the show’s title to be kinda of odd? I mean he says, “Who WANTS to be a millionaire?”, instead of the more natural “WHO wants to be a millionaire?” or “Who wants to be a MILLIONAIRE”. Putting the emphasis on “wants” seem weird, like there are other possibilities (who hates to be a millionaire?).
I guess one should just consider the source; the bigger question is why is Regis Philbin such a star all of a sudden? Six months ago, he was Kathy Lee’s sidekick, and comedic cameo on the Letterman show, and now he’s top banana on the highest rated show on television? It’s a strange world, my friends, very strange indeed.
TT
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
–James Thurber
Re: what if the friends/relatives of one of the contestants deliberately vote wrong, to mislead the contestant during a “poll the audience” lifeline?
I found out on a Friday that I was going to be flown to New York for a taping the following Thursday. The other 9 contestants were in the same boat. Each of us had exactly 1 guest in the audience. Now, I have a LOT of relatives in New York CIty, all of whome would have loved to attend the taping, but the tickets for each taping are given out way in advance. There was only space for 1 guest per person.
SO, at MOST, there would be 9 people in the audience with a vested interest in seeing the guy in the hot seat fail. Since there are about 150 people in the audience, those 9 people are not powerful enough to sway the results much.
And besides… the 10 contestants and their wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends/moms/whatever are quarantined together all day, and can’t help but become friendly to each other. The other 9 people in my group were all VERY nice people, and so… while PART of me wanted the guys in the hot seat to hurry up and lose so I’d get another chance… the fact is, you’ve grown to LIKE these people, and you can’t help rooting for them. So, I’d be astonished if the 9 friends/relatives in the audience were really devious enough to give a deliberately wrong answer.
However, in every crowd, there tend to be a few jokers who pick silly answers, just for a laugh.
Wouldn’t it be funny if the person in the relationship chair gets the call? He or she could pull out a cell phone and say something like, “Oh hi Reeg. Yeah we just talked. Anyway you don’t have to read me the question, I think the answer is…” Maybe they could do a spoof on one of those Sat. Night Live shows.
On a more serious note (although not too serious), I thought of an idea to make the “Call a Friend” lifeline more useful, for the contestant, although it isn’t all on the up-and-up. Who knows, perhaps this strategy has been employed. The contestant can call Mom or Dad or whoever, knowing full well that all his buddies and brothers and sisters and cousins, etc. can listen in on a speaker phone and then anyone who knows for sure can give a signal to the spokesperson, the guy who talks to Regis, stating that he or she knows the answer for sure and what that answer is. The spokesperson can make as if he or she knows the answer hands down or say something like I’m pretty sure, etc. It all looks legit to the people at WWTBAM but isn’t really.
Regis flubbed the other night, pronouncing the “p” in “coup d’etat.” The contestant burst out laughing…
After the show became well-established and people were familiar with the format, I definitely got the feeling that some of the F-A-Fs were doing just that (for example, there was a guy the other night who kept repeating the Q and As as if for other people standing by). The problem with that approach is if you get enough people together I’m sure they’d spend too much time debating between themselves to give an answer in less than 30 seconds. 
I saw the show a few nights ago and when one of the guys started talking about the possible answers they showed his friend in the audience, and she was shaking her head like the answer he was saying was wrong and he should try again. I figure it’d be too obvious for someone to try and get away with that kind of thing, but just to relieve my mind, please tell me the person in the hot seat is facing away from the audience or something. It looks like it’s a 45 degree angle away on the show sometimes.
Like most game shows, they probably have ushers & lots of them watching the gallery for things like that.
The relationship chair is in back of the person playing the game so you see both at the same time.
I remember a foreign pager commercial, where a contestant was in a sound-proof booth, a la “21”. He had a text pager and was getting the answers from a friend at home watching the show live.
The answer to the big question was “Richard Nixon”. His friend sent “NIXON”, but he was holding the pager upside down. He lost when he answered “NOXIN”. 
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
(1) If someone uses the 50/50, and then Phone-A-Friend, Regis says, “He’s going to read you 4 answers.” Why all four? I have seen episodes where the jerk follows directions and offers his friend all four answers, including the two which are known to be wrong, and other episodes where the intelligent contestant breaks the rule and gives his friend only two answers, but Regis does not complain afterwards. What’s the deal here?
(2) How come the audience answers always add up to 100%? Are they not allowed to abstain? What happens if someone in the audience really doesn’t know? Do they have to answer? Or maybe the percentages are as a percent of the answerers, so the contestant does not realize that half the audience felt it to be too difficult?
Keeves,
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On the phone a friend, I imagine the contestant is free to say just about anything (within FCC guidelines). Technically, I don’t think he is required to even read the question. In fact, I think there was one contestant who was so cocky, on the last question he used the phone a friend and called his folks. He sat there as the time ticked off, then commented that he didn’t need help, he just wanted to tell them he was going to win the million. And then he did. (I heard that, didn’t see it.) So if the contestant doesn’t want to read the question verbatim, but paraphrase, that’s probably okay. If he just wants to ask between two options, that’s fine. As to why Regis says all four answers even after 50-50, I don’t know. Regis is a dweeb. Maybe it’s in his contract? And why do the contestants do that? They aren’t thinking?
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I think the percentages are based on the responses, not on total audience members. If you abstain, they take the percents off one less response.