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Who are TV’s all-time prize winners?

Nine claims $3.165m as the biggest cash ever won in a single episode anywhere in the world -but how do Daz & Dee stack up as individual winners?

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Nine claimed the The Block: Triple Threat‘s whopping $3.165m as “the largest sum of money ever won on any television program anywhere in the world” and it’s certainly hard to find fault with the total sum given away in a single episode.

Wikipedia lists $2.522m given away in a champion run on Jeopardy in the US in 2004, and in any correlation inflation and currency exchanges should always be taken into account.

The claim also prompted Fairfax to file an impressive list of all-time winners in Australian television, listing the (flop) series The Hothouse with a valued prize (house, land, boat, two cars) of $2m also back in 2004. Of course it wasn’t a cash prize, like most of the big winners.

I admire the research that went into putting this together, but while it doesn’t list all The Block winners such as runners up Josh and Charlotte last night, there is one very obvious omission.

Can you pick it?

1) $2,000,000 – Simon and Jules, The HotHouse, 2004
2) $1,016,000 – Andrew Skarbek, Million Dollar Minute, 2015
3) $1,000,000 – Rob Fulton, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, 2005
4) $1,000,000 Martin Flood, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, 2005
5) $1,000,000 – Trevor Butler, Big Brother, 2004
6) $935,000 – Darren and Deanne, The Block, 2015.
7) $932,577 – Yolanda Stopar, Temptation, 2006
8) $857,655 – Tracey Korsten, Temptation, 2006
9) $836,000 – Greg Mathew, Big Brother, 2005
10) $736,000 – Steve O’Donnell and Chantelle Ford, The Block (Season Eight), 2014
11) $701,241 – Rob O’Neill, Temptation, 2005
12) $672,357 – Stephen Hall – Temptation, 2005
13) $664,667 – Joanne Segeviano, The Price is Right, 2005
14) $663,738 – Brigid O’Connor, Temptation, 2005
15) $638,068 – Sunil Badami, Temptation, 2007
16) $603,002 – Blair Martin, Temptation, 2007
17) $569,747 – Laurie Dennis, The Price is Right, 2004
18) $568,316 – Marisa Tamboro, The Price is Right, 2004
19) $535,000 – Dougal Richardson, Million Dollar Minute, 2014
20) $510,500 – Jonathan Maher, Million Dollar Minute, 2014

You can read more detail on most of these winners here.

16 Responses

  1. That is wrong, that They didn’t have the big adventure winner, he still won a million dollars, I still enjoyed it for what it was eg a cheaper Aussie survivour, better then a lot of reality shows, eg big brother, I’m a celebrity get me out of here, and what ever marriage show

    1. There you go – Robert Kusmierski $676,790
      01-06-1992 (from Wikipedia)

      Interesting to note that according to the RBA Inflation Calculator, that win is worth about $1.2m in today’s dollars

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