Edit: It’s the penultimate day of 3-2-1. Has Tom played a blinder, or has he just made a decision he may regret? Join us tomorrow for the final prize reveals!

Alex Davis has posted up the new US Millionaire rules on Buzzerblog, but he’s also put them in a comment here so I’ll repeat that as it’s probably worth its own post:

“OK, new Millionaire rules. It’s not as good as old Millionaire but it can’t be much worse than what we had to endure last season with the completely useless Expert, no one using Double Dip, bad contestants, unbelievably tough material, everyone walking away on question 7 or 8 and about one person every week or two making it to $25,000, etc.

The game is played in two rounds. The first round each question is randomly given one of ten dollar values (between $100 and $25,000) and the categories are shuffled. You won’t know what you’re playing for until you answer. That first question could be for $100 or maybe $25K. Could be the easiest, or could be the hardest. If you’re right the value of the question is added to your bank. You can walk away at any time during the first 10 questions with half your bank.

You’re given three Lifelines. Ask the Audience survives. The other two are called “Jump the Question”. If you use Jump you bypass the question but you don’t get the dollar value for it, like an Escape from 1 VS 100.

If you survive the first 10 questions you are guaranteed $25,000 and you play “Classic Millionaire” with four questions, valued at $100K, $250K, $500K, and $1M. You can walk away with your bank (or whatever dollar value you are on), but if you miss you leave with $25,000.

Again, it’s not as good as old Millionaire but it sounds interesting (I’ll be doing a set visit Thursday) and it really can’t be any worse than last season. The show got too predictable and stale, and it’s hard to change that on a daytime TV budget. They reached a point of no return, and it was either this or switch to Hot Seat. I’m glad we switched to this.

The only weird thing is getting rid of the Hot Seat. I’m not sure what that accomplishes, but there we go.”

Thanks Alex. Sounds as though it might be fun, although until I see it I’m not entirely sure how well it will all “fit”.

Thanks to Alex Davis for pointing this out, a promo for the new season of US Millionaire (Facebook link) has come out and, well, it certainly looks as though it’s going to be different. The US producers have the interesting problem of trying to keep the show interesting whilst not giving mega-money away on a daily basis. Will the changes entertain or alienate the viewers? And how much can you modify Millionaire before it stops being Millionaire and becomes something else?

In other news, Tom has made his first 3-2-1 rejection. What has he rejected, and what’s the new prize that’s been bought to the table to replace it? Find out what gets rejected next… tomorrow!