Who wants to be a Millionaire ...

... and how badly? A recent contestant on the show has been cleared of cheating or as The Daily Telegraph put it "The Nine Network has publicly exonerated Who Wants to be a Millionaire contestant Martin Flood". Apparently Mr Flood was investigated after a rather unorthodox approach to answering questions on the show - what was described as "incoherent reasoning" resulted in the correct answers. The episode with Mr Flood, which aired on local television on Monday night, was taped three weeks ago, and after it he was assessed by a psychologist and a risk management team. This might have had something to do with him having correctly answered the $250,000 question. Mr Flood suggested he had an idea the audience and host might have been frustrated when he took 12 minutes to answer a question. Host Eddie McGuire said it was the first time he has really been worried on the show "... I didn't know whether he was receiving cosmic rays into his head, whether he was cheating, whether somebody was signaling".
The next episode, where Mr Flood will win or lose the million, has already been taped and will be broadcast next Monday in the show's last outing for this season. The network has refused to comment on whether Flood took out the big one.
All of this raises a very perplexing question: If the show is pre-recorded why on earth do they drag it out so long? If the network is serious about making Millionaires, you'd think they'd want to give as many people as possible the opportunity to do so. Maybe it's just me, but slow television including "we’ll find out if you're right after this break" does nothing for me!