who wants to be a millionaire original air date
August 16, 1999
title: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (U.S. game show) text: Millionaire?" franchise. The original U.S. version aired on ABC from August 16, 1999, to June 27, 2002, and was hosted by Regis Philbin. The daily syndicated version of the show began airing on September 16, 2002, and was hosted for eleven seasons by Meredith Vieira until May 31, 2013. Later hosts included Cedric the Entertainer in the 2013–14 season, Terry Crews in the following season (2014–15), and Chris Harrison, who began hosting on September 14, 2015. As the first U.S. network game show to offer a million-dollar top prize, the show made television history by becoming one of the highest-rated title: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? text: answer questions; and the amount offered increases as they tackle questions that become increasingly difficult. The maximum cash prize offered in most versions of the format is one million of the local currency. The original British version debuted on 4 September 1998, and was aired until its final episode on 11 February 2014; a revived series of seven episodes to commemorate its 20th anniversary in 2018, were aired from 5 to 11 May. Since its debut, international variants of the game show have been aired in around 160 countries worldwide. The format of the show was created by David Briggs, title: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? text: 11 February 2014. Four years later, ITV revived the programme for a special 7-episode series, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the British original. This series of special episodes was hosted by Jeremy Clarkson and aired every evening between 6 May and 11 May 2018. Since the British original debuted in 1998, several different versions of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" have been created across the world, including Australia, the United States, and India. In total over 100 different international variations have been made. On 18 April 1999, Nine Network launched an Australian version of the game show for title: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (U.S. game show) text: Tapings were moved to NEP Broadcasting's Metropolis Studios in East Harlem in 2013, and production moved to studios located in Stamford, Connecticut the following year. For the 2016–17 season, production relocated to Bally's Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Episodes of the syndicated version are produced from June to December. The show originally taped four episodes in a single day, but that number has since been changed to five. When the U.S. version of "Millionaire" was first conceived in 1998, Michael Davies was a young television producer who was serving as the head of ABC's little-noticed reality programming division title: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (U.S. game show) text: The U.S. version of "Millionaire" is a co-production of 2waytraffic, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Valleycrest Productions, a division of The Walt Disney Company. 2waytraffic purchased "Millionaire"s original production company Celador in 2008, while Valleycrest has produced the series since its beginning, and holds the copyright on all U.S. "Millionaire" episodes to date. The show is distributed by Valleycrest's corporate sibling Disney-ABC Home Entertainment & Television Distribution (previously known as Buena Vista Television). The U.S. "Millionaire" was taped at ABC's "Television Center East" studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York from 1999 to 2012.