| Who wants to be a poker millionaire on TV 20050323 |
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| Thursday, 23 March 2006 | |
 Here's the recipe to instant TV stardom and success. Take a million bucks. Add the two famous faces who hosted the original Idol reality TV show in the UK. Put them under a few spotlights and cue the music. Serve them all together in a gameshow format that combines the drama of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and the tension of multiplayer poker. Put it on ITV (Britain's biggest television network) and call it The Con. The result? You'll have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand in 30 minutes flat.Ant and Dec became household names throughout the world when the first season of the UK version of American Idol, called Pop Idol, launched to screaming fans on ITV five years ago. Their charm, humor and on-air banter made this crazy pair an instant hit - twice as popular as Ryan Seacrest's one-man show. And almost impossible to imitate for the countries that bought rights to broadcast the show after Pop Idol rocketed to the top of the charts.  Since leaving Pop Idol, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly have had their fair share of TV gigs, including I'm a Celebrity (Get Me Out of Here) and Saturday Night Take Away. They're even scheduled to have a private one-on-one interview with Charles (Prince of Wales), Prince William and Prince Harry! But possibly the most exciting item on their agenda in the next year is a new game show (that Ant and Dec came up with themselves) called The Con: a sensational mix of poker, greed, money and TV gaming glitz!Knowing how popular the presenting pair is, ITV has jumped at the opportunity to air the duo's first self-owned TV show. Loosely based on poker and scheduled to flight this coming summer, The Con will be the first gameshow in the United Kingdom to guarantee that a contestant participating in the game will walk away a millionaire. The poker part of the show comes in with straight-faced bluffing that competitors are required to pull off flawlessly if they hope to be the last man standing at the finish line. And whoever bluffs best about how much money they've won gets to keep a million bucks! Just like that. Like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Weakest Link, Greed and other mega money game shows before it, The Con will center around different sets of general knowledge questions - but if your bluffing doesn't match up to your question-answering skills, you're outta there! If the show sounds like a winner, it's because it already is! ITV's making a no-lose bet on this one. Before selling the idea to ITV, Ant and Dec had already played The Con with friends at their neighborhood pub - and everyone loved it. More importantly, the pilot finished filming in February 2006 and test screenings have come out tops every time! If you're in the UK, keep your eyes peeled - The Con should be in your living room in the next few months. For everyone else, keep your eye on your local TV guide! If The Con is anywhere near as popular as other TV shows that started in the UK before licensing the concept worldwide, it won't be long before you're in front of your TV screaming "You're a CON!" |
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