 |
Poker
Resume: TV's hottest game
Age: Uncertain, though the hieroglyphic symbol for a fool is a stick figure drawing to an inside straight.
Why It? Not since Oscar Madison, Speed and Murray the Cop has watching men (and woman) lying to each other across a table made such great TV. Call it Reality TV with cards. It's poker, absent bad cigars, cold beer and bologna sandwiches. For the moment, Texas Hold `em is the hottest game on cable. No fewer than six networks - ESPN, ESPN2, Travel, Bravo, Fox Sports Net and GSN - had hit poker shows in prime time this year. (OK, GSN's was a blackjack show, but you get the point.) In fact, the finals of ESPN's "World Series of Poker" drew a staggering 2.8 rating in prime time. Poker is so hot ESPN is producing a weekly original drama about the game. Interestingly, there's little drop-off in ratings when poker shows are rerun; apparently people are learning strategies from the shows, a network exec says. Yet few programmers are willing to speculate as to why poker has become so hot. "I would never have predicted it," ESPN programming chief Mark Shapiro says. Our guess is that it has something to do with one of Big Julie's best lines in Guys and Dolls: "The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius." MCA Back to this month's issue
|
 |
