Poker news from http://www.thestar.com/
A bout of channel surfing earlier this week conjured up memories of Monty Python, specifically that classic skit involving television coverage of Thomas Hardy's latest novel.
With a huge crowding cheering on, a fevered announcer provided play-by-play like this: "He's writing fluently, easily with flowing strokes of the pen as he comes up to the middle of this first sentence."
What sparked the Pythonesque flashback was one of the televised poker matches shown this week featuring commentary that was equally ludicrous, though unintentional: ``Roy's got two pocket rockets and let's see if he smooth calls or comes back over the top and pushes in."
This isn't just life imitating art, this is life exceeding art. By my count, Canada's sports channels featured at least one episode of televised poker every night this week, which might lead one to assume the apocalypse is nigh.
But the fact is poker, though hardly a sport by anyone's definition, draws pretty good ratings.
"Who ever thought people would watch other people playing cards on TV?" asks TSN president Phil King, who is nonetheless happy they are.
Poker has been on television for almost a decade, drawing the same kind of audiences as other pseudo-sports used to fill holes in the dog-days schedules. But it took on a new popularity last year when it helped fill the void left by the NHL lockout.
Amazingly, more than 18 months later, it has not only survived hockey's return but has actually grown.
TSN's poker averages 104,000 viewers. Last summer's World Series of Poker special drew 314,000 — about the same as a Blue Jays game. The Degree Poker Championship final last fall attracted 269,000 viewers.
Rogers Sportsnet's Saturday night poker is averaging 102,000 and its afternoon airings have been known to beat Major League Baseball. The Score's prime-time poker averages 50,000, a decent number for the headline channel.
A 39 per cent growth in audience over the past year has spawned a website (http://www.scorepoker.com) that lets viewers play against Score personalities.
What's most amazing is that poker is scoring good numbers despite getting more exposure than Paris Hilton. In addition to the sports channels, poker appears on conventional networks with similar results.
Its popularity helped spawn an entire channel, CGTV, a digital entity that contains hours of pasty-faced, sunglass-wearing gamblers drawing to inside straights. Viewer's Choice is airing the World Series of Poker on pay-per-view and TSN has such faith in its homegrown Degree Poker Championship that it will broadcast September's series in high definition.
For the networks, the attraction is obvious. It's cheap programming.
With no rights to pay, it's a lot less risky than the game itself. In fact, the only real expense is the cost of editing: it takes 20 hours in the cutting room to produce one hour of televised poker.
Poker also attracts a broad audience with a slightly higher than average percentage of those young males advertisers are always trying to reach. Their interest has been fuelled by the popularity of online poker.
"It's kind of a guy thing," says Score vice-president David Errington. ``It fits very well with our audience."
Poker may have a strong following, but how much longer can this ride go on? With all this exposure, won't the fad wear off soon?
"There is that danger," says King. ``That's what happened with figure skating after it got so popular after the '98 Olympics.
``But not everybody is a figure skater. A lot of people play poker and there will always be that interest."
For those who fear poker might displace real sports, there's little chance of that happening.
Most sports will still outdraw poker and no channel, outside of CGTV, wants to be known as the poker network.
For that we can be grateful. |
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