ask the expert

When you think about, the "Phone-A-Friend" lifeline on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire has always been lame.

In theory it sounds good: if you don't know the answer you call a friend to see if they know. You even get to choose a few friends for your list so you can have people with different specialties/knowledge. So why did it fail so often? Friends that contestants called either got the question wrong, weren't that sure of the answer at all (forcing the contestant to use another lifeline to narrow it down more, like 50/50), or they couldn't even get their answer out before time ran out and the call was cut off. It always made me nervous.

Notice I used the past tense there. "Phone-A-Friend" is being dropped from the show.

Anyone who's read TV Squad for any period of time knows that we have a bunch of game show fans here. OK, maybe it's just me and Bob. But we've been watching game shows for years and know what works and what doesn't. A challenging premise that allows the viewer to play along? That works. Picking numbered cases at random? That doesn't (at least not after the first five episodes, anyway).

So, when I heard about the changes that were coming to the syndicated Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, I wanted to reserve judgment until I saw them. Now that Meredith Vieira's smiling face has graced my TV for the seventh season opener, I can say that I like most of the changes ... except for one. The new graphics and music are fine, the new lifelines make more sense (more on those in a second). But now there's a clock.

Yeah, you heard me; the show that once let contestants take as much time as they wanted to answer very tough questions now adds the pressure of a time limit. And that's not a good thing.