NYTimes article

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
They predict blackjack as the next big thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are going to be very disappointed.

[MicroBob]

The problem with the poker-dome project as I understand it involves their idea of making everything sound-proof and mirrored, etc at the table.
By doing this they want to show the hole-cards LIVE to the studio audience.
That way the audience can react to some guy who has no idea how badly behind in the hand he is to make for better TV I guess.

But evidently there are some Nevada laws about outside parties having knowledge LIVE of hole-cards like that.


Obviously if they do this then they will have to remove all cell-phones and stuff like that from the players so that somebody in the audience can't give them some sort of 'signal'.


I also found the article to be somewhat interesting.


I'm wondering where they get their tourney buy-in numbers from. They didn't seem to go up nearly as much as I would have expected from the starting point in 2001 and it just doesn't make sense to me.

There are all these $10k buy-in tourneys all over the country now.

In 2002 (pre TV-boom) the WPO in Tunica was a big deal and their $10k event had a whopping 126 players.


How on earth does 'total number of entrants worldwide in tournament play' only jump from 147k to 304k from 2001 to 2005?
This doesn't seem right at all.

There wasn't even any TV poker in 2001.
the WSOP ME has gone from 600 or so players all the way up to 5600.
How on earth has the total number of tourney-entrants only doubled?


Total buy-ins in the millions goes from $72-mil in 2001 to $376-mil in 2005 so they claim.
This is only a 5x increase from the pre-TV days and I find this unrealistically low as well.

[surfinillini]

[ QUOTE ]
The Travel Channel says ratings for its "World Poker Tour" have fallen 36 percent in the last two years.

[/ QUOTE ]

maybe it's because the show absolutely sucks...I wonder what the rating b/w 2004/2005 are for ESPN's WSOP broadcast which is not very watchable but definitely more clean and entertaining than WPT broadcasts

the article does not give specific numbers on ESPN

[MicroBob]

It's almost impossible for the ratings of these shows NOT to go down because there are now so many of them all over TV.
Especially true with ESPN that shows them over and over and over again.

I flipped through a couple of the prelim events airing again today on ESPN2.

Consider all those reruns of different events on FSN as well (Monte Carlo, PSI, UB Challenge, Full Tilt play like the pros)

Curious what kind of ratings GSN's high-stakes show. I don't get that channel but from the discussions in WPT-forum it seems like it's a reasonably decent show.


There is probablymore than double the amount of poker-programming on TV now compared to Apr, 2004.

WPT can't possibly keep up the ratings now that there are practically 2 or 3 different programs on per night.

[wisehandpoker]

Predictions of a blackjack explosion strip an article of credability.

[mug77]

[ QUOTE ]
Ultimate Blackjack Tour? Wtf?

[/ QUOTE ]

There already is a WSOBJ.

[mug77]

[ QUOTE ]


There wasn't even any TV poker in 2001.


[/ QUOTE ]

Yes there was they have been broadcasting the WSOP for a long time.

[burningyen]

[ QUOTE ]
There already is a WSOBJ.

[/ QUOTE ]
If only there were, if only there were.

[MicroBob]

The broadcasting of poker on television pre-WPT was so infrequent as to be almost inconsequential.

I should have referred to it at pre-WPT era or something to be more accurate though.

[grdred944]

I agree with those who feel that as more people become more knowledgebale about poker, the lower the ratings will become for those programs that led the charge during the infancy of the so-called poker boom. The WPT and WSOP telecasts are repetitive. Shows like High Stakes are enjoyable and a nice change but I imagine another 12 weeks of it and we'll start getting tired of it as well.