Million Dollar Password

Production and broadcast history

Million Dollar Password premiered June 1, 2008 at 8:00 PM Eastern. The initial order of the series consisted of six, hour-long episodes, each comprising two games. These six episodes were taped in New York City's Kaufman Astoria Studios in March 2008. Repeats of the first season aired on Thursdays beginning June 26, 2008, moved to Sundays on August 3 and finished on August 24.

Season two, another six episodes, began on December 18, 2008 with a special Thursday broadcast. The show moved to its regular Sunday time slot three nights later. These games were taped on August 2–4, 2008 at CBS Radford studios in Los Angeles. On January 7, 2009, despite good ratings, CBS removed the last two episodes (one featuring Norm Macdonald and Jamie Kennedy scheduled for January 11 and another with Chelsea Handler and Jeff Garlin scheduled for January 25), along with a Season 1 repeat scheduled for January 18, from its schedule. The program returned to the schedule on May 24, 2009. Excluding June 7 for the broadcast of the 63rd Tony Awards, the network ran a mixture of unseen episodes and repeats of Season 1 and 2 episodes on Sundays until the beginning of July. The first four episodes, airing during the official 2008–09 television season, had an average viewership that made the show finish as the 42nd most-viewed program of that season.

Betty White became the first celebrity to play in all American television versions of Password with her appearance on the June 12, 2008 episode. The widow of Allen Ludden, who was the host of the original Password in its various incarnations from 1961 to 1980, she also appeared on December 28, 2008, and was the only celebrity to appear more than once during the show's run. Sande Stewart, the son of Password creator Bob Stewart, was a consultant for the show. Noted cruciverbalist Trip Payne acted as the show's "word expert".

On August 3, 2009, during the 2009 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler officially announced that there were no plans to renew the series; despite strong overall ratings, the show was most popular among a very old demographic that was not popular with advertisers.

GSN originally aired repeats of the series on Sunday nights in mid-2010, later putting the show additionally on weeknights for a few weeks more, until removing the show from the schedule completely. It was then re-added in a Saturday afternoon slot in January 2011. In June 2013, GSN removed the series from the schedule permanently.

Gameplay

This format of Password departs somewhat from its predecessors in terms of gameplay. The first half of the game is an elimination game featuring two contestants and two celebrity guests. The contestants alternate playing 30-second rounds in which they attempt to correctly identify as many as five given words with a celebrity partner using the traditional one-word clue method, like the Lightning Round. There is no limit on the number of clues for each word. Words can be passed on and returned to later if time permits.

The contestants are each paired with one of the celebrity partners for the first two rounds, and then switch partners for the next two rounds. The rounds alternate between the contestant giving and receiving clues, such that they give and receive once to each celebrity. After four rounds, the contestant who has correctly identified the most words moves on to the Million Dollar Password game. For the final round, the contestant who is trailing in score plays first. His opponent does not need to play the final round if they are still leading after that, and otherwise has their round cut short as soon as they have passed his opponent's score. If the contestants are tied after four rounds, a tie-breaking word is given to both teams, starting with the winner of a coin-toss. The teams alternate giving clues and responses until one contestant gets the word and wins the game.

Million Dollar Password

The Million Dollar Password round had a six-step prize ladder with a top prize of $1,000,000. The contestant's partner in this round was the celebrity with whom the contestant earned more points in the elimination game; if the contestant earned the same number with both celebrities, their partner is the last celebrity the contestant played with. The contestant may choose to give or receive the clues for the entire round. For each step of the ladder, the clue giver must get their partner to say five given passwords within 90 seconds. For each word, the clue giver may give a maximum of three clues (similar to Cashword from Super Password). The giver may pass, but cannot return to a word, like the original "Lightning Round" of the classic Password.

Successful contestants may take their winnings and leave, or may attempt the next prize level. At each subsequent level the gameplay remains the same, but the number of available passwords is reduced by one. Failure to complete a level ends the game. A contestant who fails on the first two levels earns nothing. Failure on the $50,000, $100,000 or $250,000 levels means the contestant leaves with $25,000. Should a contestant clear the first five levels, s/he wins a guaranteed $250,000 and gets a free shot at the $1,000,000 top prize. (In season one, $250,000 was not a safety level.)

If a contestant giving the clues clears the $100,000 level, s/he is shown the six (the first five in season one) passwords for the $250,000 level (and in season one, the five passwords at the $1,000,000 level) before making a decision.

Legal clues

Throughout the game, the giver must wait for a response before giving a new clue, and only one response may be given at a time. Breaking either rule forfeits the word. (The guesser may suggest the giver pass, but only the clue giver may officially do so.) Antonyms are acceptable clues, but hyphenated clues and acronyms are not. Using more than one word, a "coined", foreign or otherwise unrecognized clue will also forfeit the word. As before, givers may use multiple words to form sentences and phrases, but must pause in between each word.

Licensed merchandise

Endless Games began distributing a home box version of Million Dollar Password in November 2008 and a second edition was released in June 2010. iToys distributed a handheld electronic version of the program in 2008. In November 2008, RealArcade published an iPhone OS game based on the show entitled Million Dollar Password 2009 Edition. In December 2008, the game was released on some mobile phone platforms and, in March 2009, RealArcade released a version of the game for PCs and Macs. Million Dollar Password 2009 Edition was released on CD-ROM in July 2009, distributed by Encore USA. Andrews McMeel published a 2010 day-to-day calendar based upon the program in July 2009.

U.S. standard ratings

In the following summary, "rating" is the percentage of all households with televisions that tuned to the show, and "share" is the percentage of all televisions in use at that time that are tuned in. "18–49" is the percentage of all adults aged 18–49 tuned into the show. "Viewers" is the number of viewers, in millions, watching at the time. "Rank" is how well the show did compared to other TV shows aired that week.