Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: Best Multiplatform Marketing Effort—Enhanced TV

Brandweek, June 5, 2000 by Erik Gruenwedel

ABC's megahit game show effortlessly went from the boob tube to the Internet.

Unless you have been sharing shade space with Rip Van Winkle under a tree, you've probably heard of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the quiz show that transformed Regis Philbin from a mere morning show co-host into a pop-culture icon, padded the wallets of a few couch potatoes and vaulted ABC from third to first place among TV networks in less than a year.

Millionaire is so much a juggernaut that when ABC announced adding a fourth night of the one-time summer replacement and little else to its 2000 fall lineup during a presentation last month at Radio City Music Hall, Stu Bloomberg, co-chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, told The Hollywood Reporter that his focus would switch from new talent to keeping the show running smoothly.

"We'll be able to maximize our promotion, marketing and publicity efforts as never before," said Bloomberg.

For Enhanced TV, an interactive component of GO.com, the Internet arm of The Walt Disney Co., Burbank, Calif., and parent of ABC, maximization means expanding Millionaire's audience in cyberspace.

Since its debut in March, one of Enhanced TV's responsibilities has been to field a Net-based simulcast version of Millionaire for ABC.com. The enhanced version enables viewers to answer the same questions as the contestants on the TV show in real time. Enhanced TV viewers, who compete with other online players, score points by answering the questions correctly. Winners receive gift certificates and Millionaire merchandise, among other prizes.

In the show's first six Webcasts, which began March 28, more than 1 million people logged onto the Millionaire link, with an average connect time approaching 45 minutes, according to an Enhanced survey of 27,000 respondents.

Jonathan Leess, senior vp of Enhanced TV, says the network decided to expand its Internet presence rather than wait for the number of homes with set-top boxes to reach "actionable" levels. Initial forays into convergence TV included last year's interactive components to the Monday Night Football and Sunday Night Football telecasts. "Millionaire was something we planned when we were looking at a tape of the [British] version before Regis was [chosen]," says Leess.

According to Bill Carroll, vp of programming for New York-based Katz Television Group, "a game show lends itself to [online] usage because it's real-time involvement." A successful interactive platform for a TV show, he notes, has to include a positive payoff in terms of information, involvement or entertainment: "If [the online contribution is] the equivalent of a phone poll or other information that you already know, [it could] irritate those who already use the Internet."

For security reasons, the interactive component of Millionaire doesn't have the questions on it. Instead, browsers have to watch the TV show. Since the show is taped on the East Coast, it becomes time-zone centric. Leess says allowing the actual questions online would be an open invitation to hackers. "That's why we keep the quantity level of our prizes high and the value of the prizes low," he says. "Actually competing for $1 million or a chance to get on the TV show is still about a year away until we perfect security issues."

To keep online viewers engaged during the TV show's commercials, Leess says contestants can score extra points by answering questions specific to the advertising spot being shown. In addition, Leess believes in polling online viewers. He says viewers could vote whether a TV contestant should or should not use a lifeline, cash out or answer the question.

In April, J.C. Penney signed on as a sponsor of the interactive version. As a result, Enhanced TV created a foyer that announces Penney as a sponsor with a banner, graphic and message throughout the Webcast. The idea is to eventually sell nightly online sponsorships. Marketers can also become part of the interactive questions. Says Leess, "That really ties in the advertiser and hooks the user into watching the commercial."