This Is What Really Happens When Someone Wins A Game Show

Posted by : Tawny Hembry / On : May 25, 2018

This Is What Really Happens When Someone Wins A Game Show

Bright lights. Beads of sweat. A patient host. An in-studio audience of hundreds; a television audience of millions. A ticking clock and a small fortune on the line.
It is in this tense moment that game show winners are born. The game show, like television itself, has its roots in America and for the most part remains a uniquely American experience—the drama, the pageantry, the average “everyman” getting a shot at the big time. Game shows can spend every afternoon with us like an old friend, or explode into our lives with the dramatic brevity of a shooting star. It was as soon as Regis Philbin was about halfway through reading the final question and Kevin had a chance to see it on his screen. His eyebrows pop up and he gasps in what was likely a physical manifestation of the flurry of synapses going on in his head. “I know this!” Kevin said aloud, and within seconds of announcing his Final Answer the confetti fell, the crowd roared, and Regis introduced America to the latest, and biggest, winner of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

“My thoughts as Regis announced I won was NOT slipping on a Plexiglass floor now with confetti on it—so I moved gingerly,” Olmstead tells us of the immediate aftermath of that moment. After a hearty handshake hug with Regis, Olmstead carefully ran over to his mother and wrapped her in an embrace as confetti continued to rain down and the Millionaire theme blared over the cheering studio audience. As the cameras continued to roll, Kevin made his rounds accepting congratulatory hugs and high-fives from the production crew, reveling in a moment unlike any other. Adam Holquist, an electronic musician from Pennsylvania, was trailing on his first ever Jeopardy! appearance when he pulled out a come-from-behind win in Final Jeopardy. But for Holquist there was not much opportunity to bask in the warm glow of victory on the Jeopardy! sound stage; “there’s only about 10 minutes between each game, so there’s not a lot of time to savor, unfortunately,” he says…..

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