“Three million
hopeful contestants called the show during the
first month of series 1. We could never have
achieved such success without Broadsystem.”
Bruce Vandenberg, Director of Interactive Media, Celador Int.
Objective
Broadsystem has been actively involved in the operation of Who Wants to be a
Millionaire (Millionaire) since its launch in August 1998.
Millionaire receives more calls than any other game show and there is no restriction
on the number of times that a prospective contestant can call in. Such high call
volumes presented both the programme makers and Broadsystem with major technical
challenges.
Also, when the programme was conceived, no precedents existed for
guaranteeing complete fair and random selection of participants
when dealing with such a high
numbers of callers. Using our knowledge of broadcast game shows, we predicted
levels and time loading of calls and developed appropriate screening and selection
methods that both met the agreed criteria and would also appear completely fair
to callers. At the same time, we had to ensure that callers’ interests
were protected by keeping call-time as short as possible.
Solution
Broadsystem spent eight months prior to the launch of Millionaire devising competitor-selection
procedures that met all requirements for fairness and randomness. We then built
a bespoke network of with over 4,000 automated response lines.
Every caller has to answer a simple question from a vast pool of potential questions.
Using interactive voice recognition (IVR), they are immediately told whether
they have been successful or not. Successful respondents are asked to nominate
which particular show that they wish to appear on and, of these, 100 are randomly
selected for each show.
The procedure for selecting the 100 callers is based on extremely complex and
comprehensive analysis of draw-down ratios to ensure that every correct response
has an equal chance of selection. Each of the 100 successful callers is then
required to complete a test of skill which narrows the number of contestants
to 12. Ten appear on the show and two are reserves.
Results
Calls
into this mass-capacity platform exceeded three million over
the four weeks of Series 1. This level of call traffic ranks
as one of the highest direct response events in history.
Millionaire
is renowned as the most successful game show ever and has
been rolled out to over 100 further countries which, in every
instance, use the procedures devised by Broadsystem.
