UPDATE: Meredith Vieira to Leave “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” After 11 Seasons
UPDATE: 2:10 PM ET – Extended comment from Meredith Vieira has been received.
After hosting the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire for eleven years, Meredith Vieira will be leaving the game show. The AP bulletin from which the news was received cites a source claiming that Vieira will be freeing up more time to work on other projects, such as more NBC News ventures and a dedicated YouTube channel focusing on life stories. She told Brian Stelter, reporter for The New York Times, “I am about to embark on a new adventure with NBC and I have a digital venture which will be announced shortly. This just seemed like the right time to make the move.” Vieira has already taped all of season 11, with production wrapping in November. News agency Reuters has received comment from a spokesperson for the Disney/ABC Television Group, the distributor of the program: “It’s the final year of Meredith’s contract. She has chosen to move on and pursue other opportunities. We are searching for a new host.”
New episodes with Meredith at the helm are scheduled to air until the end of Spring 2013. She began hosting Millionaire in September 2002, after ABC canceled the primetime program with Regis Philbin and it moved into first-run syndication. At the end of this season, she will have hosted nearly 2,000 episodes of the trivia program. Meredith Vieira has won two Daytime Emmys for her work on the show, in 2005 and 2009. An official public announcement of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire‘s renewal for the 2013-14 television season has yet to occur, however, the spokesperson for Disney/ABC Television intimated that a new season will begin in Fall 2013 with a new host taking over.
I’m personally sad to see her go. In person, she’s an incredibly warm source of comfort for a very stressful game, and that’s needed in order to get many contestants to shine. She’ll be missed!
They’ll find another host. As long as it isn’t Rosie O’Donnell, it’s fine. Regis could come back, but I don’t know if that’s the direction the producers want to go in.
If Regis returns they need to go to the hot seat format, the new format is more like a traditional game show. Regis works better with the face to face format, knowing when to get serious and when to turn it to an interview to the point of almost getting a YBYL vibe. Also they would need smarter contestants…Millionaire has suffered from adverse selection and putting total idiots in the hot seat…the new format helped that but that was why the hot seat format fell apart toward the end.
I think Regis in the new format would be a mistake. I also wonder if going to an hour (or a double run) would be a good idea…lets face it Millionaire is getting killed by Harvey feud. they need a strong host who can at least secure a demographic if not make a move at Harvey feud. While bringing back Regis would make sense part of me sees Dawson 94 feud. Yes it worked, but Dawson in the new format didn’t work and he was slow and didn’t wear as well as in the past or if they brought it back to his pace and format.
I still say Bergeron. Better than an ESPN stooge or some newscaster.
Feud and Millionaire tend not to go head to head in most, if any, remaining markets. Any syndicated show is better judged by how it tends to perform vs its lead in, direct competition in market and year over year performance. I know there seems to be some inclination to compare games to games, but that’s really an apples to watermelons comparison in some cases.
And with the ABC O&Os (many of them anyway) using Millionaire as the 12:30 filler, an hour is out of the question. Thus, it isn’t going to get the boost of having two airings count towards its rating.
Meridith is a pretty lady and well liked but shows like today’s I do not enjoy it when her mind runs in the gutter. She asks some pretty sexual questions and this is supposed to be a family program.