Live At The Bike - IS DEAD

[BigDaddyCinti]

I just called the Bicycle Club and the floor person near the LATB set, told me ... that the show is finished ... no more broadcasting. No other information could be given but no shows are scheduled to be broadcast in the future...

Did broadcasting tournaments so often instead of live action cause an exodus of subscribers?

What's your guess or if you know what is the truth.

[Nathan_2]

They were losing money doing deep stack no limit cash games with Hanson and Tuchman commentating. I think the tournament coverage was an attempt to make Live Bike financially sustainable.

[HOWMANY]

I would have paid $100+ per month without hesitation if they would have consistently spread some higher stakes limit games. I know most people didn't like the rare LHE games, but I'm sure there are a ton of people that would have gladly paid a lot more for LATB if they showed high quality broadcasts of higher NL games consistently. And by higher I don't mean 10/20. To be honest I found Tuchman really annoying when he was doing the show but the quality dropped like a boulder after he left and it only got worse from there.

[chucksim]

[ QUOTE ]
I would have paid $100+ per month without hesitation if they would have consistently spread some higher stakes limit games. ... To be honest I found Tuchman really annoying when he was doing the show but the quality dropped like a boulder after he left and it only got worse from there.

[/ QUOTE ]

The quality dropped once they started charging for the netcast, ironically. A shame, as it was a great show when it was free and they'd show a 10 limit game once in a while. Ah, for the days of Shirley, Bart and Dave....

[Ramon Scott]

They used to have this thing that they would run during television programs, to make broadcasting possible. They were called commercials. Since online sites are a bit shy with cable broadcasts, sans FTP, you would think that this would be a no-brainer. No subscriptions necessary. All the US sites could be free to even say .com. Nobody listens to me. I mean, really, I thought LATB was a great, great concept. We all did. Pokerchannel at pokerzone are just ok in my mind compared to this. As a fan of poker on TV, as most of us agreed this was better than most. In my mind, I still feel like internet televised poker is more likely going to be on the rise since it is more a market-topic-specific, as the pokerstars broadcast was very nice even without hole cams.
Bart was critical to the program, no doubt, but as long as the commentators are industry-recspected, I think that the poker-viewing public is inclined to accept them, despite the fact, that most posters seem to hate every poker show and every announcer there is.
It would be interesting to see how many subscribers there really were, but if that was supposed to be the income for the show, then there is no was it could support all the staff needed to run it without commercial support. Funny how pokernetcast was the new name of the hub, and that was near the end.

[chicken10der]

LATB has ads along the right-side of the page. And remember when the Wednesday games were sponsored by PokerBlue? Yeah, a bunch of commercials is what they needed. Why weren't they smart enough to think of that? Advertising for other companies in exchange for money - revolutionary.

[surfinillini]

LATB began dying right after the 2006 WSOP...the games were stale and the normal 5/10 or 10/20 game wasn't innovative, people including myself got bored. The 5K whale game wasn't going anymore, nor were the high limit games or any high NL for that matter.

Regardless, whenver the subscription time came I bought two months and was very dissapointed so I cancelled it.

LATB was a great show in late 2005/early 2006...it began tapering off after the WSOP.

[normaljoe]

It's a huge wasted op for the Bike. The revenue from online marketing alone can be massive which the bike/producers seemed to neglect. LATB still has huge marketing and financial potential that I'm sure someone will pick-up the concept and run with it. It may just have to be me.

-aldo

[FlacoDogg]

I find it interesting that they just gave up once bart left. I think they could have spurred some excitment by holding some sort of audition/contest to find Bart and Bostin's replacements. Nicole is cute, but she's no commentator. All the talkers on here that complain about everything Bostin says could have stepped up and taken their shot to replace him. Surely there must be a semi-pro out there that is also an actor that could do some commentary...it's LA!!! I thought Lindgren was great during the heads up tourny, someone like that would be a great fit.

It's just a great shame that the company behind the show have apparently given up on it with Bart's departure.

[CaseS87]

[ QUOTE ]
I find it interesting that they just gave up once bart left. I think they could have spurred some excitment by holding some sort of audition/contest to find Bart and Bostin's replacements. Nicole is cute, but she's no commentator. All the talkers on here that complain about everything Bostin says could have stepped up and taken their shot to replace him. Surely there must be a semi-pro out there that is also an actor that could do some commentary...it's LA!!! I thought Lindgren was great during the heads up tourny, someone like that would be a great fit.

It's just a great shame that the company behind the show have apparently given up on it with Bart's departure.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with casting for LATB is this- Anyone good enough to provide GOOD commentary would be able to beat the games for more $$ than LATB could pay them.