NEW YORK, July 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Todd Sloane, Senior Vice President of Publishers Clearing House, has a strong stomach for reality TV. Like millions of TV viewers who enjoy the current rash of reality programs, he can chortle with the best of them as a show's unsuccessful participant or "victim" is humiliated and sent home to lick gaping wounds.

But, hardened as he is, Sloane can't bring himself to televise the ultimate humiliation: a person finding out that he or she actually had the lucky number worth ten million dollars in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, but threw it away.

"It would be too painful to watch," says Sloane. "People tell us they would not be able to take it and would just about lose their minds"

Sloane has spent the last fifteen years orchestrating the company's TV commercials which feature stunned reactions of average people learning they've just won a Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes prize worth thousands, even millions of dollars. Indeed, Sloane was the man who had the bright idea of videotaping the "winning moments" at the winner's door rather than telephoning them with the news.

"We were missing the best part," he recalls. "Plopping the winners on a soundstage couch weeks later and watching them say, 'Now I can afford a little red car' couldn't compare with the tears and hugs of the 'winning moment.'"

The company knows that the most recent "would-be" millionaires -- the folks who actually threw away the winning entries -- reside in Illinois and Nebraska. Over half of the multi-million dollar prizes have gone to winners of "second chance" drawings conducted when the first winning number failed to be returned. The "losers" are not informed of their ill fortune. "And there are no satisfactory consolation prizes," Sloane says.

While Publishers Clearing House acknowledges that televising the poor soul would be a powerful motivator to retrieve a discarded PCH mailing from the trash, the company is focusing on making their mailings "more irresistible" with new prize and product offerings. They are also making their website, http://www.pch.com, "more exciting."

The company is also hoping that their traditional "winning moment" TV commercials, currently on the air, will encourage hopefuls to enter the sweepstakes -- either by responding to mailings or entering online at http://www.pch.com. The incentive this time is million dollar prize that the Prize Patrol will award August 31st in a "live" commercial on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

SOURCE: Publishers Clearing House
Web Site: http://www.pch.com