[The Clock originally printed that Hamilton’s appearance on the show would air Dec. 21 & 22. The air dates have changed since the article went to print. The new dates are Dec. 14 &15 at 12/12:30 as mentioned in this article]
“I’ve been shot at before, and I was more nervous on the show,” says Mike Hamilton of his recent taping of the popular quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Hamilton’s two-day appearance on the show was taped in early October and is scheduled to air later this month.
“If I won a million dollars, first I’d pay off my student loans, pay off my mom’s mortgage and take care of all the people who supported me. Then for fun, I’d take a trip to Vegas with my buddies and build a small music studio with a nice sound board and a bunch of instruments, and I’d start producing music around here.”
Hamilton, a grad student at PSU, decided to audition for the show after watching an episode while working out on his lunch break from work. The process was simple, “I went to the show’s website, picked an audition time, and then had to be in New York the day of the audition.”
“In a cafeteria-style room with 100 other people, I answered a 30-question bubble sheet test made up of old questions from the show. I knew right away that I’d passed.” Of the 100 other potential contestants who auditioned that day in June, only eight passed the test and had the opportunity to be interviewed by the producers.
“I was the last one to be interviewed by a producer, and then they kept me after for an on camera interview. A few months later, I received a postcard saying that I was in the contestant pool.” A few weeks later, Hamilton was on his way back to New York, but this time he was going to play for a million dollars.
With today’s reality TV shows fishing for a good story, many qualified contestants don’t actually make it onto the show because they don’t have a good “story.” “I’m a veteran, and [the producers] loved that angle; it always get rounds of applause from the audience.” But Hamilton also attributes his getting on the show to more than his time overseas, “I’m loud, animated, and good at drawing attention to myself, which is good for TV, as well as a broke college student.”
Though he’s unable to say if he won any money, his two-day appearance shows that he at least made it past the first question, which with the new game rules could have been worth from $100 to $25,000 and anot necessarily an easy question. The game format has changed in the nearly ten years since Regis’s days as host. Now, with Meredith Vieira hosting, formerly on The View, the first ten questions are randomized so that they no longer increase in difficulty or value as the contestant plays. The final four questions return to the original style of play with increasing value [$100,000 to $1,000,000] and difficulty. Hamtilton says, “I got a few easy questions that were so easy I was actually suspicious of them. But I did get a lot of hard questions at the beginning.”
Even harder than keeping his winnings a secret from his family and friends is not actually receiving any cash until after the show airs. “You don’t even get any money that you may or may not have won until 30 days after the show airs.” This means that if he did win a stack of cash, he wouldn’t see any of the winnings until the end of January.
Hamilton’s appearance on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is scheduled to air on December 14 and 15 on WMUR 9 at 12:30pm and WNNE 10 at 12pm. To get into the Millionaire “hot seat” yourself, visit www.dadt.com/millionaire.