WB's Billion Dollar Jackpot
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WB's Billion Dollar Jackpot
Bbfreak | Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 07:19 am     Article Taken from E! Online: WB's Billion-Dollar Jackpot by Lia Haberman Feb 10, 2003, 2:00 PM PT Pity the Fear Factor fools who ate reindeer testicles and bobbed in cow's blood for a paltry $50,000. The latest reality game show is raising the stakes to $1 billion. Details of a potentially lucrative new WB series were leaked Monday to Variety, which revealed that the Frog network is close to inking a deal with Michael Davies' Diplomatic Productions, the team behind ABC's hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, to produce a two-hour live special with a whopping $1 billion jackpot--the most prize money offered in television history. Davies, executive producer of ABC's upcoming naughty new series The Wife Swap, has joined forces with Pepsi to bring the big-bucks game show to the air in September. But don't bother bugging the WB for an audition. Contestants will have to win their spots on the show via specially marked Pepsi products. Of the 1,000 contestants who qualify, one will win the chance to compete for the mega-payout. The strategy is being likened to a real-life Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. (In Willy Wonka, five kids win access to Willy Wonka's magical candy works after finding golden tickets wrapped around their chocolate bars.) Due to the dumb luck it'll take to appear on the show, producers are hoping for a good cross-segment of the population (read: not the typical actors and models who appear on many current reality series). As to be expected, Pepsi will reportedly bombard the public with news of the promotion all summer leading up to the planned September air date. While there's no guarantee that anyone will win the $1 billion, Pepsi, which is putting up the prize money, is meeting with insurance companies, including Lloyds of London, to make sure the money's there should someone actually beat the house. (The biggest game-show payday so far is the $2.18 million won by Kevin Olmstead on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2001.) Pepsi reps, however, refused to confirm the story today but said, "It sounds like a great idea." Davies' office would not comment, while calls to the WB were not returned. According to sources in Variety, details of the game have not been disclosed, but contestants are likely to face off in a game of chicken. In fact, at this stage, there's little concrete information about the special, which is to be produced in New York City. There may be multiple hosts, a possible celebrity component and some involvement with at-home viewers. The rest remains to be seen. Given the high stakes and summer-long hype, WB insiders predict the billion-dollar bribe will attract more viewers to the network that alternately finds itself ranked fifth or sixth. Their current reality series, Surreal Life, has averaged 4.4 million viewers this season. In comparison, Fox's American Idol has averaged 25.5 million viewers this season while an average 18.8 million continue to tune in to Joe Millionaire. The WB must have high hopes for Davies--this is the second production staged by the net and Diplomatic Productions to be sponsored by Pepsi. In January, the network announced plans for an ad-free variety show. In a throwback to the early days of sponsored television, the six-episode series, titled Live from Tomorrow, will feature corporate logos and products, from companies including Pepsi and Nokia, interwoven throughout the show. Meanwhile, Pepsi may be hoping to dazzle viewers with dollar signs to take attention away from the hip-hop boycott announced by Russell Simmons last week. The boycott comes after the soda maker replaced one foul-mouthed pitch-person (Ludacris) with another (Ozzy Osbourne). Maybe a billion dollars would help? |
Ryn | Tuesday, February 11, 2003 - 03:59 pm     link: WB's Billion-Dollar Jackpot |
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