Press Conference with Regis Philbin, Michael Davies and various media representatives
Friday, April 6, 2001
10:45 a.m.
Press Conference with Regis Philbin, Michael Davies and various media representatives.
Moderator: We welcome back to the set Executive Producer Michael Davies and the star of “Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire,” Regis Philbin. Welcome to both of you. This is a bit of a reversal for you, Regis, because rather than asking the questions, you get to answer them now.
Regis: How did the first contestant in the seat do, how much money?
Moderator: She did very well, she walked away with 8,000 points. She got a hat and pins.
Regis: She got a hat and pins. Well that’s good; that’s all right. Can’t beat a good Disney hat and a pin.
Moderator: So anyway…we are ready to fire away…
Question: Is there a chance that you’ll bring the show down here and do the television show from here?
Regis: Well, I think there’s a good chance, but Michael will know more about that.
Michael: Yeah, we’re talking about it, we would like to, we need to figure out some things … try to do a schedule …
Question: I hear you have a big, a couple of big winners next week, ABC’s already announced it. Are you surprised it took so long?
Michael: Well, no, it surprises me that anyone goes to the million anyway. When they’re sitting there with 500,000, unless you like ask them their middle name, … I’m surprised, these always seem to come like busses, you know, when one person wins another person seems to come along immediately and do it again.
Regis: Well, we’ve got two very exciting shows coming up next week and we waited a long, long time, and there were no winners, and then suddenly two won, so it’s going to be terrific.
Question: I love some of the things that you do with the show, with bringing in celebrities and whatnot. We play a game on the radio every day at 5 o’clock, it’s called “I’ve Got Five On It.” If you wouldn’t mind, could you let us know your top five celebrities that you’ve had on the show, in your personal opinion, your top five celebrities.
Regis: Top five celebrities? Well, the guys I love are the fellows who make me laugh, like Martin Short, he was terrific; Jason Alexander was great. I’ll tell you another one, Norm McDonald, Norm McDonald was the last one in the hot seat the last time we played the celebrities and then went on to go up to a million dollars and then, like Michael said, didn’t have, wasn’t sure, didn’t want to lose 400 and whatever it is thousand dollars for Paul Newman’s Kids, so he walked away with 500,000. Norm McDonald, Jason, Alec Baldwin was a great one, Rosie was a lot of fun. Anyone else that you can think of? Yeah, those were some of the best, and very smart people, too.
Question: After the first phenomenal year of the show, you had said that you thought the buzz about this show could probably keep going for another year or two. I mean, the real buzz. Do you think this interactive exhibit, you’ve done things obviously to keep the buzz going like the stars editions, but this exhibit here at Disney World will keep it going now and continue the success of the show?
Regis: Well you know somebody else asked me that, what is the plus and the minus of having an exhibit like this where you entertain maybe 6,000 people a day and that comes to 30,000 in the five-day work week. I think the appeal of this show is so powerful that the online version of it, the board game version of it, the CD-ROM version of it, has only heightened the excitement about the show and has made them want to watch and maybe even participate one day in the real thing. So I don’t see any leveling off of the excitement. Naturally, the ratings when we came out were stratospheric. You can’t keep ratings that high. There has to be a leveling off period. But yet if you look at the top 10 shows every week, the top 10 rated shows, you’ll see four Millionaire shows in there every week and what network could ask for more than that.
Michael: Not more than that. “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” is on four nights a week on a weekly basis. “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” is watched by more people, more adults 18-49, than any other show on television. We don’t have very many people who watch four nights a week. They tend to watch one night. Who can be there to watch all those different nights? They watch one night. A statistic I just got was that Millionaire is watched by more young adults 18-49 than the entire WB and UPN networks put together on a weekly basis. It’s a really huge ridge. Our policy with the show across all those forms has always been to try and extend the experience of playing the game to as many people as possible. And that’s how its been with the CD-ROM with the online process and this is just terrific. Two point two million people a year are going to get to experience playing the game versus only 450 on the TV show and that’s really good.
Question: Regis, just for you last week, we put a poll up on the Web site to ask people which game show host they would most want to chat on a plane with. Last place was Pat Sajak, second place was Alex Trebek, first place was Regis Philbin, with 33 percent of the vote.
Regis: I hope Alex Trebek doesn’t hear that. Lot of problems if he does.
Question: Of course, there was a fourth category, too, called “I Would Rather Chew Hot Glass,” but it didn’t get anything like you did. My question to you is this: if you were going on a plane, who would you like to sit next to, except Joy, of course, and where would you be going for your vacation.
Regis: Who would I like to sit next to on a plane and where would I be going with that person? I’d love to spend an hour or two with Lou Holtz, going back to Notre Dame. How’s that sound?
Question: Where do you like to vacation:
Regis: Notre Dame is my favorite spot, outside of Disney World.
Question: What do you hate about traveling? You must do a lot a traveling.
Regis: Well, I hate the airport dance you have to go through these days to get on the plane to begin with, and hopefully the plane will take off, you know, relatively close to when it’s supposed to. Those things, travel has become really a burden.
Question: What’s your favorite place to eat in New York?
Regis: You’re not going to believe this. Gray’s Papaya Hot Dogs. The absolute best. 72nd and Broadway. The price just went up.