The show that saved ABC — at least for a while — a decade ago will be back on the air in the summer.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire will return to the network this summer to celebrate its 10th anniversary — and, ABC hopes, give the network’s summer ratings a boost and promote the fall schedule. As was the case with its initial run in 1999, the game show will be stripped across multiple nights for two weeks.
Regis Philbin will be back as host.
Millionaire will kick off its anniversary tour on Sunday, Aug. 9. It will run at 8 p.m. ET from Sunday to Thursday for two weeks before wrapping up on Sunday, Aug. 23.
ABC is hoping to recapture at least some of the ratings glory the show achieved in its initial run. The August 1999 run was a huge hit, which led to another round of shows in November 1999 and eventually to Millionaire taking up as much as four hours of ABC’s prime-time schedule every week.
When its ratings started to slip in the 2001-02 season, ABC was left without enough backup shows to fill the void, and the network hit another slump that lasted until the 2004-05 season, when Desperate Housewives and Lost helped turn things around.
Source: Zap2It
