Who Wants To Be A Billionaire?

Culture

from the bigger-and-better dept

You begin to wonder how much crazier TV gimmicks can get. After initial successes in primetime game shows and reality shows, producers realized they needed to “up the ante” to keep drawing viewers. That explains gimmicky shows like “Joe Millionaire”. However, expect the hype level to go somewhat insane as the producer of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” gets ready to launch a special (one time shot) “Who Wants to be a Billionaire?” show this fall. Even worse, in order to find contestants, they’re stealing the “Willy Wonka” tour idea. Since the show will be sponsored (of course) by Pepsi, the way you get on the show is by finding specially marked Pepsi cans (you mean no one patented this idea?). Of course, the chances of anyone actually winning will be slim. Even this idea, though, is stolen from the glorious dot com days. In 2000, there was a company that was offering people a chance to win a billion dollars for agreeing to receive its annoying direct marketing (spam) emails. Of course, the caveat was that no one was guaratneed to win (and, no one did).