In my last post I mentioned that there are only a few (I said 3) events from the WSOP that will be televised this year. I have noticed something I think is a bit odd over the last few years, while there appears to be a growing interest in watching poker on television ESPN has decided to cover fewer events (in their defense they have expanded the coverage of the main event almost every year).

Now understand that I am just happy that any events are being covered, but with that being said there are 57 bracelet events (and a few special events) that could be covered. One reason I have heard as to why some events aren’t covered is that people don’t want to watch anything except no-limit hold-em. Personally I think this may be true because people don’t get exposed to the other games. Look back the coverage over the years – almost every event that has been covered is nlhe (no limit hold em), and only occasionally has any other game been covered (there was some coverage of horse events for a couple years, but even that has been changed to only show the final table and that will be nlhe).

I guess the point I am trying to make is that we repeatedly hear no one wants to watch anything else, but if you never give them the chance how do you really know? If you have only showed it to them briefly, you don’t have much of a comparison.

My opinion on the matter is this:

1. We need a full-time 24/7 poker channel that could have coverage of events that never get air time otherwise.
2. When major tournament stops are being televised, why not show some of the specialty events that occur at the same time?
3. If you’re going to show other games (beside nlhe) then take a minute to explain the rules of the game.
4. You will never get people interested in viewing other games if you don’t show them the other games.

I am under absolutely no illusions that this post is going to make a bit of difference to anyone. I just felt like getting it off my chest and out there for consideration.

On a related note, I am very disappointed in Charter. Supposedly they are going to be airing the new Poker stars sponsored show The Big Game late nights (I thought about the same time as Poker After Dark) on FOX, and yet I can’t find a listing for it anywhere. Sometimes I just hate only having one choice for cable.

More later…..

Well I have to say that I am very annoyed and disappointed in iTunes.

Let me explain why this is so:

The job I have requires me to spend many hours a day in a car on the road in areas where there is really bad radio reception and since I don’t want to fork out the money for satellite radio I have been using my iPod. I download and listen to a variety of podcasts (mostly poker related) and use this to keep me company and hopefully increase my knowledge base while I am driving. Here is where my annoyance/disappointment comes in, I fairly regularly will check iTunes for new podcasts that I might be interested in. Unfortunately it seems that iTunes doesn’t ever clear out the backlog of podcasts that have been posted in the past but aren’t being updated anymore. It is very frustrating to me at least that I have to sift through the ton of orphaned podcasts that seem to live there. I am not a programmer, and I have very limited knowledge of database functions/issues but it seems to me that the folks at iTunes should be able to write some sort of monitoring program to see how long it’s been since a podcast was last updated. If it’s been more than a year, then it’s time for this thing to go away. I realize this may not mean much/anything to anyone else, but I doubt I am the only one in the world that feels this way. It can’t be that tough to do something like this, even if they couldn’t write a program to do this (which I doubt seriously) then as a last result it seems that they could have some people do it by hand (yes I know it would be hugely time consuming, but it could be done by people that were very low on the ladder so they weren’t wasting higher paid people on it).

I know that there are some who would say I’m just lazy and that it’s not that tough to sort through the orphaned podcasts, or that there is some value to having them still there. I disagree and say that if you’re providing a service like this, it’s your responsibility to ensure the best experience for the customer possible and the current situation isn’t the best for anyone. Of course I also blame the people that posted the podcasts since they are the ones that abandoned them. If your going to start a podcast and post it on iTunes then I feel it’s your responsibility to keep it up to date, and if your not going to post anymore then either remove it yourself or post one final entry saying that it isn’t being updated anymore.

I could probably go on about this some more, but what would the point be???? So instead I will say that I am very pumped to know that the WSOP (World Series of Poker) started last week, which means it won’t be long until they start broadcasting the events from this year. Unfortunately they are supposedly only broadcasting 3 events this year, my comments on that will be coming soon.

More later…..