“Million Second Quiz” Premieres Hits the Air With Stiff Challenges, Prizes

College student Brandon Saunders spent the entire hour of the show in the Money Chair.

NBC's brand new 24/7 quiz show "Million Second Quiz" made its live on-air premiere Monday night, and afterward, one man was more than $100,000 richer.

Not a bad hourly rate for a guy who's still in college.

That student would be Queens, N.Y.-bred Brandon Saunders, a computer science and math student at New York University and a quiz show veteran. (He's been on "Jeopardy!" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.") Saunders started out and finished up the show's hour-long broadcast in the show's Money Chair.

Saunders dispensed with Barry Landers, a sweater vest-clad San Diego man several decades his senior, and then with Leigh Guerra-Paz, a young Dallas lawyer. Plucked from her family's home and whisked to New York on the merits of her chops playing the "Million Second Quiz" app online, she became the show's first line-jumper.

Finally, as the show's first hour on air neared its end, Brandon dispensed with current Winner's Row denizen Carolyn Bergier when he correctly identified just how many zeroes were present in a googol.

That string of zeroes (100 of them, as he correctly noted) earned Saunders the chance to remain in the Money Chair, where he was racking up $10 per second — and with his correct answers Monday evening had won more than $149,000 by the time the broadcast ended, rocketing him to the top spot on Winners' Row.

Watch the 24/7 show continue in the live video player below:

"Million Second Quiz" airs on NBC at 8/7c every night all week.

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