Kathy Napierala estimates that she has auditioned at least 50 times by phone for Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

        But when producers didn't call to invite the Maryland woman to play TV's top-rated game show, she dialed a toll-free number posted on the Internet for Cincinnati's Millionaire audition.

        “It's a lottery, and I got through,” said the 40-year-old Silver Spring Web-site designer, one of many who traveled hundreds of miles for a Millionaire audition Wednesday at the Omni Netherland Plaza Hotel downtown.

Millionaire auditioners (from left) were Bob Bender of Deerfield Twp., Peter Bonner of Annapolis, Md., Frank Baldridge of Inez, Ky., and Bill Mack of Osgood, Ind. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

        “I have answered every question correctly on the phone (for the game show)but I've never got called back,” said Ms. Napierala, one of the few women who passed the written test Wednesday morning. “I thought it was worth taking two days off to drive out here.”

        The lure of winning $1 million drew people from as far away as Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and Massachusetts.

        Millionaire producers registered 420 people for the Cincinnati auditions, part of a traveling contest search started in March primarily to find more female, African-American and other minority contestants.

        They didn't have much luck at the first of three Wednesday auditions. All 113 people in the room were white; most were male.

        The prospective contestants were selected from 31,191 callers received in 15 minutes on May 22. Brad Knapp, a Lebanon real estate broker, said that he and his wife each spent 10 minutes hitting the redial button on their phones to get through and register.

        Producers opened the morning audition by giving the 113 people just 12 minutes to complete a 30-question “fastest finger” multiple-choice test.

        Of that group, 52 people — 13 women and 49 men — were invited to play mock Millionaire games videotaped on a digital camera, and be interviewed by producers.

        Questions ranged from “Who shot President Reagan in 1981?” and “What was the name of the hotel in The Shining?” to “What's your most embarrassing moment?” and “What would (host) Regis Philbin find most interesting about you?”

        “I had a lot of anxiety, but I think I did reasonably well,” said Mr. Knapp, 56. “If they're looking for an older, balding, slightly overweight white male, I might have a chance.”

        But they're not. Millionaire, TV's top-rated game show, has been criticized for having too many white male contestants who qualified for the show through the blind, random telephone auditioning process. All eight million-dollar winners in the past two years have been white men.

        “We believe our contestants should reflect our audience, but that has been difficult to achieve with our phone method,” said Michael Binkow, a Millionaire supervising producer here Wednesday.

        Millionaire producers hit the road, he said, because “we were disappointed we didn't get more African-Americans, Asians or Hispanics.”

        In the morning Cincinnati session, Millionaire producers only found sex and age diversity. But seeing so few female finalists boosted the confidence of Julia Garrison, 38, from Mason, and Jean Shively, 69, from Symmes Township.

        “I hope I have a better shot to get on. I'm hoping they want to get more females on the show,” said Ms. Garrison, a Middletown Regional Hospital nurse.

        “I think I am the oldest person here,” said Mrs. Shively, a Millionaire and Jeopardy! addict. “There were very few women who made it to the second stage, and they were all born in the '70s.”

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