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Mind you, they're not hard math word problems. One of the keys to the success of these shows is the decision to use sub-Jeopardy! questions. "People feel 'I'm better than them,' while in the '50s you may have felt more comfortable saying you had never seen such a smart guy in your neighborhood as you saw on a quiz show," says NBC West Coast president Scott Sassa. Herb Stempel, the one who blew the whistle on the old Twenty-One, has a less upbeat take. "They want the people in the audience to pat themselves on the back and say, 'Gee, I knew the answer,'" he says. "The whole culture is getting dumbed down."
Michael Davies, the producer who brought Millionaire to America from Britain, says he may have only another two- or three-year run, but that the game-show format will always be popular. "The idea that television is being junked up is ridiculous," he says. "Compare this to all the crap sitcoms that have come on for the past 10 years." Davies argues, pretty convincingly, that his show, no matter how simple the questions may be, is more educational, dramatic and positive than the vast majority of programming. "I find it appalling every time a professor of television at Syracuse University says this is a sign of the dumbing down of America. I think it's a sign of the dumbing down of America that there are professors of television at major universities."
Davies figures that when Millionaire's ratings drop, he still has a viable property for syndication, CD-ROMS, an Internet site and whatever the next interactive medium is. Michael Fleming has been thinking the same way since 1994, when he founded Game Show Network. "We saw a huge underdelivery in the category. And this category lends itself to new technology platforms," he says.
Millionaire's interactivity is very merchandise friendly, but most people think viewers tuned in in the first place simply because of all those zeroes the show gives away. "The drama on television at this point is so pitifully synthetic that the only real drama is on the quiz show," says Ben Stein, the host of Win Ben Stein's Money, Comedy Central's second highest-rated program. "People are terribly keyed up. The people I shake hands with after each round, their hands are soaking wet. I've seen grown men, repeatedly, cry after shows. And that's only for 5,000 bucks." On Greed, one contestant fainted. That's good television.
Millionaire builds its tension partly by waiting until the day before the taping to inform contestants that they've been chosen. Last Friday night, Dale Masel, 28, an industrial-engineering professor at Ohio University, got the call. Although he watches the show regularly, he hesitates when asked if he likes it. "Umm. I'm a much bigger fan today," he says. As is John Carpenter, the man who won Millionaire's million dollars and has been doing publicity spots ever since, hoping to make a career out of his moment. "The money itself hasn't changed my life," he says. "But being known is a big change. If people asked my friends if they knew me, they would deny it; now they use it to pick up girls."