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  With the advent of the million-dollar quiz show in 1999 and the expansion to seven-figure stakes on all four networks in 2000, many of the old records from the original 1950s era of big-money quiz show champions are being wiped out for cash winnings on network broadcasts. Syndicated television joined the fold with its first seven-figure winners in 2002.An environmental engineer and academic bowl coach for the University of Michigan shattered the all-time mark and the 14-month reign of Navy Lt. David Legler as network television's Quiz Show King April 10, 2001. Buoyed by an escalating bonus employed by ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Dr. Kevin Olmstead won $2.18 million on a question asking who the inventor was of the first mass-produced helicopter (Igor Sikorsky). Olmstead competed during an escalating bonus contest on the quiz. At the time, Olmstead became network television's 12th million-dollar winner and the first multimillionaire.  Later in the year, a 48-year-old computer planner for IBM in Austin, Tx., also surpassed Legler and became the richest return contestant in television history. Ed Toutant had first appeared on WWTBAM on Super Bowl Sunday in 2001. He was ruled incorrect on a $16,000 question, which later research proved was a flawed query. Typically, WWTBAM has not aired reprieve appearances for contestants because of the difficulty fitting them into the format of regular games and to avoid cutting into available time for the 10 contestants flown to New York for individual shows. Toutant was also playing for the escalating bonus during his original appearance, so that purse was reinstated for his return to the hotseat. He went all the way and answered during World War II, U.S. soldiers used the first commercial aerosol cans to hold insecticide. Toutant took away $1.86 million. Legler, a former Naval submarine lieutenant, continued the tradition of servicemen winning big bucks. The evening of Feb. 16, 2000, Lt. David Legler became network TV's all-time cash champion. Legler won $1.765 million on NBC's revival of Twenty-One, rolling to six consecutive victories before falling to Boston Red Cross director Dayna Klein. His father, David W. Legler, became celebrated as America's Daddy, serving as a successful Second Chance helper for his son on several of the younger Legler's matches. Legler broke a short-lived record set by popular air traffic controller Curtis Warren, who owns arguably the most distinctive hairstyle in game show history. Warren won a million-dollar showdown Feb. 11, 2000, on Greed to briefly top the list. Warren answered a four-out-of-eight choice question on TV series which have been made into big-screen films.Added to the $410,000 he won on the Fox quiz in November 1999, Warren's $1 million question pushed his total to $1.4 million. The $1 million will be paid to Warren in an annuity over eight years. Warren is a veteran of several other television game shows. Including winnings on the syndicated Sale of the Century and Win Ben Stein's Money, Warren has won $1,546,988, though the now-reclusive player may have won more on a few other games.  Thirty-one year-old John Carpenter, an I.R.S. revenue collector from Hamden, Ct., became networkTV's first quiz show millionaire when he ran the table on ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Nov. 19, 1999. Carpenter's mastery of the show's 15-question plateaus was so intense, his achievement built little suspense. His million-dollar question was to identify Richard Nixon as the only of four Presidential choices ever to appear on the satirical comedy series Laugh-In. He later returned on the show's 2000 Tournament of Champions to split another $250,000 with charity. Carpenter was joined in the million-dollar club Jan. 18, 2000, by Miami attorney Dan Blonsky. His final question came from third grade science: how far is the Earth in distance from the sun? Correct answer: 93 million miles. Blonsky's run was filled with more struggle and high drama than Carpenter's and with four confusing numerical answers as his $1 million choices, he took his time. Blonsky was later quoted by The Associated Press in November 2000 on the role of the Florida Supreme Court in the Presidential race. However, Carpenter's and Blonsky's record was toppled Feb. 2, 2000, in a four-victory performance by Summerville, Me., student Rahim Oberholtzer on NBC's Twenty-One. Oberholtzer rolled up $1 million in his four wins and $120,000 in bonus round money. Valentine's night, Navy officer Legler came within $105,000 of Oberholtzer's total on Twenty-One, rolling up $1.015 million, then went on to eclipse the record the following week. Oberholtzer was profiled on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw the week of his win, during which he discussed wide variety of interests, which led to his seven-figure win. WWTBAM struck for the third time March 23, 2000. Twenty-five year old California computer analyst Joe Trela became the sixth network millionaire, when he answered moth as the insect which shorted out a supercomputer and was the inspiration for the term "computer bug." Later on a Champions edition of WWTBAM, Trela ran into the same problem as many of the other past big winners on the show: he was stymied on the second tier of questions and ended with only $1,000, half of which was mandated for charity.Network television's seventh millionaire came June 8, 2000, on Fox's short-lived It's Your Chance of a Lifetime, based on a popular Australian game. Dr. Tim Hsieh, an endocrinologist from the L.A. area, won $1,042,309.16. His final question came when he identified Reuben Kincaid as the band manager on the TV series "The Partridge Family." Hsieh would later add $64,000 on the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire during the 2003-04 season.  The millions just kept on rolling from the network coffers. Five nights after Hsieh's win on Fox, a world history teacher from the small north Georgia town of Gray, Ga., made the millionaire club increase to eight on WWTBAM. Bob House, an Auburn University alumnus who definitely knows the chant "War Eagle," rolled to his $1 million question by using only one Lifeline. He used the other two Lifelines on his Big One, to identify which of four scientists did not have an element named after him (Isaac Newton). House said after the win he planned to continue teaching, which---at last account---he has. The summer of 2000 was becoming a big-money year for schoolteachers on quiz shows, as a Memphis-area player would soon prove. Kim Hunt's mother said, "He's always been a big shot to me," when quizzed whether her son's winnings would make him a "big shot." Hunt joined House as Millionaire IX July 6, 2000. The math teacher at Rossville Christian Academy in Collierville, Tn., joined the seven-figure club when he knew Lesotho was the only of four landlocked countries which was completely surrounded by another country. Five nights later, an environmental consultant from Olney, Md., David Goodman knew Paddington Bear originally came from Peru to sew up television's tenth million. Goodman did not use a Lifeline until his final question and, then, only to give the audience some fun. Goodman was a former two-time national academic bowl champion at the University of Michigan. At 24, Goodman became the youngest network millionaire to date. Only five nights after Olmstead set the all-time mark, young UC-Santa Barbara graduate biology student Bernie Cullen became the 13th network millionaire on WWTBAM. Cullen almost effortlessly coasted through his stack, only stopping for a Lifeline at $16,000 and toying with his audience and 50/50 helps on the $1 million question on the letter at the beginning of the registration of all non-military U.S. aircraft ("M"). Bernie's win came on Easter Sunday April 15, 2001. Several women came close to winning a million during the year 2000. The first megawinner of the new millennium, Catherine Rahm, launched the CBS quiz Winning Lines Jan. 8, 2000. Rahm won $500,000 in three minutes plus a $2,500 standard prize. Rahm had appeared on five other television games before her biggest payoff and later won on Game Show Network's WinTuition. Only 16 nights later, she was supplanted as the richest female winner in the history of network television by Melissa Hall of Las Vegas, a popular residence for game show contestants during the '00s. Hall won $600,000 in three games of NBC's Twenty-One Jan. 24. Hall's mark for women lasted more than three and one-half months until Lauren Griswold, a law student from Virginia, earned $810,000 on an inflated version of (Super) Greed May 12, 2000. Griswold was part of the top all-time team jackpot ($2.02 million) in television history with Phyllis Harris and David Juliano as her team partners. She eschewed all publicity after setting her record. Griswold's network record stood for nearly four-and-a-half years until she was eclipsed by Sheila Shaigany on The WB's Studio 7. Shaigany became the network queen when she won $854,000 on the Michael Davies-produced quiz. Shaigany won $77,000 in a preliminary round, then added the top prize of $777,000 in the game's only tournament of champions. Studio 7 suffered from anemic ratings in the summer of 2004 and was canceled after its first tournament.American television's first female quiz show millionaire was Tulsa schoolteacher Nancy Christy, who took home $1 million on the syndicated Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in May 2003. Christy, who nailed her final six questions without a Lifeline, later returned to the network Super Millionaire on ABC as one of the game's 3 Wise Men. For more than 25 years, state lottery shows have awarded potential payouts of $1 million or more. Monty Hall hosted New York's first $1 million lottery show in 1975, during which the winning spin aired on tape delay during Tom Synder's Tomorrow show on NBC. Hoosier Millionaire in Indiana was the nation's longest continually-running weekly lottery show in 2004 and had awarded more than 150 $1 million annuities over the two decades of the series. Syndication's $1 Million Chance of a Lifetime in 1986-87 touted TV's first million-dollar payoff. The winnings were divided between married couples and nine joint millionaires were crowned over the series' run. However, the winnings were awarded in annuities over a period of years and question marks remain as to whether the full amounts were actually paid. According to insiders, a clause in the contract of the production company suggested the producers held the right to bankrupt the company if the series could not meet payments to winning contestants. Nonetheless, TVgameshows.net was contacted by two of the millionaire couples who said they were still receiving $40,000-a-year checks and expected them until the year 2011. King World's version of Hollywood Squares conducted a $1 million home viewer contest during the November 1999. However, advertising disclaimers indicated the winnings was paid in an annuity of $40,000-a-year over 25 years.  Until Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! phenom, arrived on the series in 2004, the contestant who stood as the mythical syndication king was Naval pilot Thom McKee of San Diego. During McKee's impressive run on the syndicated Tic Tac Dough, he won $312,700 in 1980 and his wife Jenny became a national celebrity. McKee has written his name into the game show history books; however, McKee's total was a combination of cash and prizes, including eight cars. Of his total winnings, $200,000 was in cash---then, a record for syndication. His 43-game winning streak still stands as a television record, as does his A few readers point to the run of You Don't Say! on NBC from 1963-69, when the series gave prizes "fit for a half-millionaire" to the show's champion on the day the series awarded its half-millionth dollar in cash. However, the prizes totaled less than $50,000 and only $5,000 was in cash. Research indicates winners on CBS' $64,000 shows of the 1950s were awarded their full prizes; Kent Anderson's Television Fraud and Congressional transcripts cast a shadow on how much of the actual winnings contestants received from NBC's Barry and Enright quizzes. In the testimony of Herbert Stempel, a whisteblowing contestant from the original Twenty-One, contestants were asked to sign contracts requiring them to rebate a percentage of their announced winnings to the production company. Two other champions of note are not on this list because their victories were not on a network series. Bob Verini and Bob Blake were both Tournament of Champions winners on Jeopardy in the late 1980s and early '90s. Winnings for Verini ($196,802) and Blake ($192,501) approached the $200,000 mark. Verini eventually went over the $200,000 mark with his third place total on the Jeopardy! Million $ Masters tournament in 2002. The one exception to the single-show winnings list is for the two contestants from the CBS $64,000 shows of the 1950s because champions on The $64,000 Question were frequently sent immediately to meet opponents on The $64,000 Challenge. Based on the most accurate research available (with footnotes to indicate show details, where available): 1. Dr. Kevin Olmstead, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, ABC, April 10, 2001, $2.18 million.a steve@tvgameshows.net  |
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