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NZ buys into Million Dollar Minute

Seven has sold its home-grown game show Million Dollar Minute to TV3 in New Zealand.

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2014-06-24_2005Seven has sold its home-grown game show Million Dollar Minute to TV3 in New Zealand, in what it hopes will be the first of future international sales.

TV3 will air this year’s Simon Reeve-hosted series.

“All of us at Million Dollar Minute sense a real buzz about the show as it gains momentum and we continue to see people winning extraordinary amounts of money every week,” Reeve said. “The fact that MDM has now been picked up in New Zealand speaks highly of the format – it is compelling and really entertaining. Life changing wins happen before our eyes on Million Dollar Minute and being around that energy is an adrenalin ride for the contestant, the viewer and the people who work on the show.”

Seven’s Network Director of Production, Brad Lyons, said: “This is great news. It’s what we’re about at Seven – the development and creation of new programmes and concepts that deliver for audiences. We are driving our future with programmes and content we create and leverage. The sale of Million Dollar Minute into New Zealand is a tremendous step forward as we market this concept into international markets. We are focused on driving our presence in the sale and distribution of our programming and creating new business and revenue streams for our content.”

Million Dollar Minute has made some inroads to its competitor Hot Seat, up 13% in total viewers over the previous month.

Meanwhile the show’s former host Grant Denyer has been filming Family Feud for TEN in the same South Melbourne studios where he filmed MDM -with both shows said to have been recorded on the very same day….!

13 Responses

  1. I still find the show boring and uncompelling, however credit to Seven on their achievement with the show.

    I’ve noticed that since Seven started giving the show some regular promotion (and some big winners), it has gathered some momentum in the ratings. If Seven put more effort into marketing some of their other non reality shows and starting them on time, they might find that their post 8.30pm ratings would improve too.

  2. TV Tonight seems to be full of Channel 7 employees commenting on every story. Reading your sucky comments toward all channel 7 shows is becoming boring. Time to get real and away from the pixies. Admit that Nine has some great shows as does 7 as do the other stations. Your pro 7 commentary is childish, disrespectful and delusional. Million Dollar Minute gets pumped most nights with the occasional win. It’s no awesome show that will be remembered as one of the great Australian programmes. I suspect 7 are simply trying to claw back a few cents from NZ to help fund the constant overspending on everything they do. I give million dollar minute 2 – 3 years before another mid night light bulb idea goes off in some executives head and we have a new fuzzy wuzzy fluffy show that flops again. Now off ya high horses and get to work….

  4. Considering it is just Sale of the Century or Temptation without the temptation or the fame board it is a bit rich for Seven to be claiming this as a home grown Seven production.
    As usual they steal a format & call it original.

    1. Firstly it was me who called it home grown. Seven devised the format internally. While there are similarities with others in the genre, this is how television operates, so so I am comfortable with my wording.

  5. It is still such a boring show. With small changes it could be great. Eg not making the million dollar “minute” procedure 14 mins long (from the last question of the regular rounds to the end of the show), which would therefore have many more questions and liven the pace. It seems there are no more than about 8 questions per round. The momentum builds then simon says that’s the end of the round!!! And get rid of the questions where you guess the answer on the big screen. Please

  6. Great work from 7 to have persisted with MDM despite all the early issues (being ridiculously hard to win prior to the $75K safe level, Grant leaving, and the ratings slow build) – A good story

  8. Most Australian dramas, reality shows, and game shows are shown on FTA tv in New Zealand.

    TV3 used to show H&A at 5:30pm (before the 6pm news), but lost the rights to TVNZ last year. In it’s place, they were showing Big Brother and The Block (both heavily delayed from the Australian broadcast), but that wasn’t working too well. I suspect they are going to put MDM in the 5:30pm slot, which will be against Hot Seat which screens on TV One before their news.

    Will be interesting to see how the ratings between the two shows goes in NZ (TV3 is pretty much like Ten in being a distant third place behind TVNZ’s TV One and TV 2)

  10. @MM – It’s only thanks to these ridiculous Free Trade Agreements, where NZ-made TV shows count as being “Australian-made” for quota points.
    Notice how many “Australian” TV commercials are foreign-made, when once this was completely banned, except in exceptional cases. Less work, less jobs for Aust.

  12. How good is it that our TV programmes are being shown overseas instead of overseas being shown here all the time, hope we forge ahead even more and get the recognition we deserve.

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