The International Currency of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The International Currency of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The advent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Millionaire) marked out a new stage in the history of both the quiz-show genre and the international format trade. In blending audience participation, a gladiatorial atmosphere, and intense psychological pressure to choose between similar answers, the show reinvigorates the myth of the heroic challenger. Moreover, while Millionaire has multiple engines, the million-dollar prize, more than anything else, brands the show. This chapter looks at the genesis of the format of Millionaire and its global franchizing. It suggests that in contrast to high-cost brand formats whose internationalization has suffered from copycats, Millionaire is a model format: its copyright has been managed successfully and localization has been accommodated incrementally, that is, without moving too far from the original concept.
Keywords: Millionaire, quiz show, global franchizing, internationalization
Hong Kong Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
