|
Television is largely (if not entirely) responsible for the poker boom.
Millions of people saw Chris Moneymaker win the World Series of Poker Main
Event on ESPN and decided that they, too, wanted to play the game that let a
regular guy from Tennessee bet $40 to win $2.5 million against the world's
greatest players. Without those broadcasts being run time and time again for
the better part of a year it's highly doubtful that the poker landscape of the
last two years, which have seen such exponential growth in both the online
game and in the number of land-based tournaments around the world, would have
developed so quickly. There's a satisfying taste of irony in the fact that
poker, a game once confined to back rooms or faraway casinos, is now an
omnipresent television ratings monster that may eventually lead to the repeal
of outdated gambling laws in far-flung locations.
To this point in the boom, it seems that no matter how much poker the networks
produce and air, the public can't get enough of it. It's a dream come true for
any television network with the rights to a big tournament series. With poker
there's zero talent cost, and the players who lose provide the cash that
winners will claim. With minimal overhead, a poker show can be one of the most
profitable programs a network produces - at least as long as the public stays
interested in the game. At some point ratings are bound to drop off in a new
approach doesn't come along. Two new shows due in 2006 are taking a slightly
different route than the traditional poker tournaments that have aired thus
far. Their success or failure may well be a barometer of how strong the poker
boom really is.
On Monday, December 19, FOX Sports Net announced the creation of the
Mansionpoker.net Pokerdome Series. The Pokerdome, an arena Fox is building in
Las Vegas only for use with the series, will be located at a mall or a hotel
in Las Vegas. This new venue will employ all sorts of technology to make the
final product as viewer-friendly as possible, starting off with where the
players play. The table will be encased in a box of one-way mirrored glass
with microphones to capture everything, allowing the audience at the Pokerdome
to see and hear everything transpiring at the table without affecting the game
in any way. All the cards in play will have tiny computer chips embedded in
them so the audience can keep track of which cards are out of play. There will
also be a 15-second clock at the Pokerdome similar to that of high-speed
tables at online poker sites, limiting the amount of time a player has to make
a decision. It remains to be seen whether these changes will make a version of
poker as popular as what's already being aired, but the one sure thing is that
it will be different than the current formula for a poker show.
Fox is betting that technology and a small rule change will keep the public
interested in poker, but the Game Show Network is taking a different approach.
Instead of showing poker tournaments for its next series, GSN is turning to
high-stakes cash games. High Stakes Poker is the creation of Henry
Orenstein, the man responsible most recently for Poker Superstars on FOX
Sports Net but whose legacy may well be the invention of the hole-card cam
that allowed the World Poker Tour to revolutionize televised poker. This new
series will focus on high-stakes cash games featuring some of the poker
world's biggest names. Among others, the 13-episode series features Doyle
Brunson, Johnny Chan, Barry Greenstein, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu,
Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest, Antonio Esfandiari, Todd Brunson, Freddy Deeb,
and Sam Farha throwing chips around the table at the Golden Nugget in downtown
Las Vegas. GSN has brought in Gabe Kaplan, world class poker player and former
star of television's Welcome Back Kotter, to provide analysis of the
games. TV-host-about-town AJ Benza will serve as the show's main host.
GSN's High Stakes Poker is set to debut on Monday, January 16, at 9 PM
ET. FSN has yet to announce an exact starting date for the Mansionpoker.net
Pokerdome Series.
|
