Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Lifelines

[Lingofan97]

Since the discussion came up on another thread, I figured it was time to bring up a discussion about this. Since its premiere on ABC in 1999, "Millionaire" has ran through eight different lifelines.

Including the current Ask the Audience (which has never left the show), and Jump the Question (added in 2010), I'll make this hard. Which one is the absolute BEST, or what would you use on the show if you just needed one lifeline

Retired six...
*Phone a Friend (1999-2010)
*50/50 (1999-2008)
*Switch the Question (2004-08)
*Double Dip (2004; 2008-10) (Super Millionaire)
*Ask the Expert (2008-10)
*Three Wise Men (2004) (Super Millionaire)

EDIT: Trying to figure out how that timeout limit got there

[TVLubber]

I say Ask the Audience.

[DialgaChampion]

I think 50/50 is the best because it gives you a 50% shot at correctly answering the question, even if you have no idea what the answer is.

The Audience is useless on harder-level questions.

Jump the Question forfeits your current question's dollar amount, and you can't use it to jump over the $1,000,000 question anyway.

Phone-a-Friend is good, but if you don't have someone who specializes in the question you need help with, you're out of luck.

Switch the Question only removes the current difficult question with another one of equal difficulty, so that doesn't help.

Double Dip is a worse version of 50/50, and unless you combine it with 50/50 like that guy did in Super Millionaire, it's not that useful, especially since it forces you into selecting another answer for the question, if your first answer is wrong.

Ask the Expert has many non-expert people playing, so they're useless.

The Three Wise Men are probably better than asking just one "supposed" expert, because you've got 3 people who might know the answer, as opposed to just one. Still though, it depends on the question, and if it falls within their knowledge base.

On another topic though, I still can't forgive them for removing 50/50 and Phone a Friend off the show. Those were staple lifelines, and by removing them, they made the show much more difficult (in my opinion, removing 50/50 because some people thought it wasn't random, and removing Phone a Friend because some people were using a computer to search for answers, are just bad excuses for "we don't want to give out as much money, so let's just replace them with lifelines that aren't as helpful").

[PrincessVinnie]

I would have to say my favorite Who Wants To Be A Millionaire lifeline {And this is coming from an actual contestant who appeared on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Play It live show at Disneyland as a teen} is 50/50 because I used to find that lifeline helpful with contestants and even though contestants lost sometimes because of it 50/50 was a miracle to contestants and I cannot understand why Who Wants To Be A Millionaire retired 50/50 in 2008 because it simply was a wonderful lifeline. I also like Double Dip as well because it really was a miracle for contestants who really got a second chance when they got the question wrong,
Vinnie

[Lingofan97]

Seems like we have some fans of the 50/50 Lifeline here, and for the next season of WWTBAMillionaire it would be great to return to the show. I don't see why it doesn't. Nowadays, I think "Millionaire" is getting a little cheap, between suffering the penalty of losing half your money if you chose to leave the show during the Shuffle round, and the Jump the Question lifeline saves the show money, instead of reverting back to the similar Switch the Question lifeline.

Ask the Expert has many non-expert people playing, so they're useless.

The Three Wise Men are probably better than asking just one "supposed" expert, because you've got 3 people who might know the answer, as opposed to just one. Still though, it depends on the question, and if it falls within their knowledge base.

These two lifelines both involved pretty smart people, but I thought were pretty dumb creations on Millionaire's account. It was a timewaster, and probably the worse lifelines in the 13-year run.

On another topic though, I still can't forgive them for removing 50/50 and Phone a Friend off the show. Those were staple lifelines, and by removing them, they made the show much more difficult (in my opinion, removing 50/50 because some people thought it wasn't random, and removing Phone a Friend because some people were using a computer to search for answers, are just bad excuses for "we don't want to give out as much money, so let's just replace them with lifelines that aren't as helpful").

It was rumored at the very end of 2009 that people at home were actually searching the answers on a computer for a proper answer, which is why in the middle of the season in January 2010 it was taken away. Heck, some people were probably doing that since 2000

[matchgame74fan]

Meredith in this clip posted on YouTube pretty much confirmed it: they got rid of Phone-A-Friend because they realized that more and more people on the other end of the line were searching for answers on places like Google (my thinking is that it became clear to the show when people started asking for spellings and were taking notable pauses when asking to repeat the words or names in a question, along with typing in the background) and not coming up with the answers with their own brain.

[Lingofan97]

Meredith in this clip posted on YouTube pretty much confirmed it: they got rid of Phone-A-Friend because they realized that more and more people on the other end of the line were searching for answers on places like Google (my thinking is that it became clear to the show when people started asking for spellings and were taking notable pauses when asking to repeat the words or names in a question, along with typing in the background) and not coming up with the answers with their own brain.

That was the case in some moments going back to when Regis hosted "Millionaire" on ABC. I could tell some people were pausing to search the web.

Same thing happens weekday mornings on Live! with Kelly if you notice

[Melyssa56]

While I knew about 90% of the correct answers in "Ask the Audience" questions, my favorite was the "50-50." It was a big help if you absolutely knew that two of the answers were not correct and one of them remained.

[Lingofan97]

]While I knew about 90% of the correct answers in "Ask the Audience" questions, my favorite was the "50-50." It was a big help if you absolutely knew that two of the answers were not correct and one of them remained.

See, there are certain type of questions that you can ask the audience, usually celebrities and gossip questions, while now harder questions you can just jump

[phimat37]

That was the case in some moments going back to when Regis hosted "Millionaire" on ABC. I could tell some people were pausing to search the web.

Same here. And I agree with Meredith on the matter.

I actually voted for "Ask the Audience", but now that I think about it, the audience could be worthless. 50:50 I liked because you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. The other ones I could care less about. But I did like "Switch The Question".

So, "Ask The Audience", 50/50, and Switch the Question were good enough for me. But I understand new technology and stuff.

[Lingofan97]

I actually voted for "Ask the Audience", but now that I think about it, the audience could be worthless. 50:50 I liked because you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right. The other ones I could care less about. But I did like "Switch The Question".

With the 50/50 you also had double the chance of getting the question right, and you get the money too unlike Jumping the Question

[DialgaChampion]

You could also argue that 50/50 gave you a true 50% chance at getting the correct answer, whereas Double Dip only gave you a 33% chance (1 answer is eliminated after your first guess, and now you've got a 1 in 3 shot at picking the correct answer).

[Lingofan97]

You could also argue that 50/50 gave you a true 50% chance at getting the correct answer, whereas Double Dip only gave you a 33% chance (1 answer is eliminated after your first guess, and now you've got a 1 in 3 shot at picking the correct answer).

Plus you couldn't leave in the middle of a Double Dip, like one man tried to do here

[CarShark]

I miss the old lifelines. Between the much harder, more obscure questions and the largely unhelpful lifelines, it's no surprise we haven't seen a millionaire with the Supermix format. I could see the changes making sense if we had constant winners, but now going over nine years since we had one outside of the tournament, it just feels cheap.

[Lingofan97]

I miss the old lifelines. Between the much harder, more obscure questions and the largely unhelpful lifelines, it's no surprise we haven't seen a millionaire with the Supermix format. I could see the changes making sense if we had constant winners, but now going over nine years since we had one outside of the tournament, it just feels cheap.

We need a millionaire. Fast. It's been eight seasons I believe since someone won the million, and still many years with someone saw the million dollar question. Maybe its been five years now since someone won $500,000 in a regular episode

Now its a pretty big deal if someone wins $250,000