Dartmouth computer programmer to appear on ABC-TV's "Millionaire" Dec. 6

Posted 12/05/00

Millionaire fever has hit Dartmouth.

Jim Matthews, the chief programmer at Dartmouth's Peter Kiewit Computing Services, will appear on the popular ABC-TV game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" on Wednesday, Dec. 6.

Matthews, who says he's been calling the show's contestant qualifying phone number for about a year, was in New York City on November 16 for the taping of the show, which will air locally on WMUR-TV 9 in Manchester, N.H., at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

"The odds of getting a call back are pretty low," says Matthews, who passed the initial qualifying test "40 or 50 times" before getting his call to appear on the show. "It was pretty much out of the blue," he says.

"Millionaire," hosted by Regis Philbin, has been wildly popular with viewers since it premiered last year. So far, the program has awarded nearly $38 million to contestants, including six $1 million winners.

Matthews admits that while he enjoys trivia games, he didn't catch on to the "Millionaire" phenomenon for a while, until a friend told him about the program. "I was a little slow to catch up on it."

Once he got his chance, though, Matthews turned to some local expertise: Norwich, Vt., resident Dan DeMars won $250,000 on the program, and gave Matthews "lots of useful information. He even volunteered to be one of my lifelines."

While Matthews -- like all "Millionaire" contestants -- is forbidden from discussing the details of his appearance until after the program airs, he does say that the trip to New York with his wife and two children was "a lot of fun. We had a great time."

And that's his final answer.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Web browsers can play along during the telecast of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" by visiting ABC-TV's "Enhanced TV" site.